


all that we see or seem

by jangjoos



Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, But not really explicit, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, Eventual Happy Ending, Loss, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mirrors, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Strangers to Lovers, but they meet each other in their dreams, semi-significant side!xiwoong and keonjo, seoho and geonhak are not soulmates, weird motifs about wind and flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:21:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28685505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jangjoos/pseuds/jangjoos
Summary: There are the people who have soulmates, the people who had soulmates, and the people who never had soulmates.Geonhak does not fall into the latter category. He remembers a typical early childhood consisting of unexplained bruises on his body and ink stains that defy explanation, feather-light and ghostly with the way they danced and bloomed across his skin whenever he was lucky enough to catch their moments of formation. But he certainly does not fall into the first category, either.Or, in which Seoho teaches Geonhak about dreams, and Geonhak teaches Seoho about dreaming.
Relationships: Kim Geonhak | Leedo/Lee Seoho
Comments: 72
Kudos: 91





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so, this has been in the making for. months now. ive mostly just been Thinking about it but it was stuck in the planning phase for a long time, too. it's kind of my baby so please be nice ? :D
> 
> content warning for themes of loss, nsfw content in the later chapters, creepy imagery involving insects (mostly millipedes), mentions and depictions of dissociation? that should be it but please tell me if i missed anything!

In Geonhak’s classroom, there’s a poster that sits above the classroom window carrying this slogan: _Someone loves you._

It’s meant to be motivational, obviously. The poster depicts a picture of a hand, a messy heart scribbled into the palm in a way that couldn’t have not been ticklish. It’s a detail that makes Geonhak cringe every time he looks at it. Even a child could tell that it’s meant to reference soulmates, and that’s largely the point. 

Had it been up to him, Geonhak would’ve taken this down a long time ago, but he’s thankful for the fact that there are better decorations around this classroom. Geonhak’s favorites have always been the ones the kids made themselves-- the mural made from twenty paper squares on the wall facing the door, the ever-growing wall of dinosaur drawings that he’s been collecting from anyone who would contribute. Even some of the awkward letters from Valentines’ Day they’ve hung around the windows. They make the room feel lived in, learned in. 

Geonhak doesn’t have a student teacher to help him out today, but his lesson plan for the day is fairly self-guided, so he’s mostly taken to working on grading old material at his desk while his students work. 

“Mr. Kim?” A small, nervous voice takes him out of his work-induced stupor. Geonhak looks up. 

“What is it, Wonyoung?”

Wonyoung’s one of the more social kids in his class, he’s found. Always at the forefront of storytime circles, organizing teams for playground games, or answering Geonhak’s questions in class. She’s the kind of person who pulls even the more reclusive children into her orbit, and consequently, into the main circle of the classroom. 

Wonyoung bites her lip. “Well, there’s marker ink on my arm.”

“Oh, permanent marker?” Geonhak says hurriedly. “It’ll be okay, it’s pretty easy to wash off--”

Wonyoung shakes her head almost insistently and pulls up her sleeve. 

There’s an orange _hello_ written in a messy scrawl all the way up the length of her arm. Geonhak realizes, with a jolt, why she’s so nervous about a splash of ink on her skin.

“Do you think it could be my soulmate, Mr. Kim?” Wonyoung asks, verbalizing his thoughts. 

“Are you sure it wasn’t Yujin scribbling on you while you weren’t looking again?” 

“She promised to not do it again,” Wonyoung retorts with the scandalized expression of a kicked puppy, making Geonhak feel just a little bad for teasing her about this. “Besides, this isn’t even her handwriting.”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry for doubting you.” Geonhak flashes her his best smile. “I’m happy for you, Wonyoungie. Are you going to say hello back?”

“Of course!” Wonyoung’s practically bouncing on her feet for a moment, but suddenly, she stops. Her expression flips into a slight frown. “I can’t tell my classmates about this, can I?”

“You can, but you probably shouldn’t. Do you know why?”

Wonyoung nods with enthusiasm. “Because if I tell them I’ve made contact, they might try to do it before they’re ready.”

“Exactly!” Geonhak beams at her. Even in the adult world, where most people have already either met their soulmates or are actively talking to them, it’s not a common thing to share something so personal to anyone except someone’s closest friends.

But Wonyoung’s still frowning, fiddling with her fingers. 

“Mr. Kim, I’m scared. What if they don’t like me?”

Soulmates are supposed to be perfect. Soulmates aren’t supposed to dislike each other, and they certainly aren’t supposed to reject each other, but it happens. Like with most things regarding soulmates, the exceptions are so rare that they’re simply not spoken about. They’re meant to love each other, and most of the time, that’s exactly what happens.

And yet, Geonhak knows better than anyone that things that rarely happen will inevitably happen to somebody. Wonyoung’s concern is valid, and he wishes that he could tell her that there isn’t a chance, that her soulmate will be perfect for her no matter what, but… 

“I’m sure they’ll love you,” Geonhak assures her, squeezing her small hands. “You’re very lovable, you know?”

Wonyoung responds to this with a delighted smile, and the conversation is effectively over. 

There’s another reason that Geonhak doesn’t tell her. Nobody tells anyone this reason, really-- it’s simply a conclusion people come to once they’re old and smart enough. Despite how much the world revolves around it, how much the world depends on it to _work,_ the natural law of soulmates isn’t exactly perfect. There are twenty-four children in this classroom-- currently twenty-three, on account of Dohyon being sick-- and statistically, at least one of them will not have a soulmate. They may lose their soulmate before they meet, or arguably worse, they’ll have been born without a soulmate at all. 

It’s one of the things that have long been thought to be far too sad and devastating to make known to someone as innocent as a child. 

* * *

Not unlike the drawings and posters in Geonhak’s classroom, there are bits and pieces of personality scattered all over the walls of the apartment that he shares with Youngjo, small signs of life and eccentricity that makes the place feel lived in and learned in as well. Youngjo likes modifying his clothes, and all the clothes he leaves on the couch and the floor whenever he forgets to put them away either have patches sewn onto them or are cut and spliced in creative little ways. Geonhak takes some drawings and craft projects home from school if they’re made specifically for him, and the fridge is practically covered in them. It’s like he has kids of his own.

Youngjo has headphones in, and he’s sitting on the couch with his laptop next to a couple of cardboard boxes from a delivery that they haven’t put away yet. He’s wearing short sleeves, revealing the labyrinths of black ink that cover the entire expanse of his forearms. They’re new. He’d had completely different drawings and messages on them the day before. 

“His name’s Keonhee,” he’d told Geonhak several days ago, almost breathlessly like the syllables taste sweet on his tongue-- and since then, he hasn’t seemed to stop talking to his soulmate for even a second. 

Sometimes, they message each other. It’s easy to tell because whenever Youngjo’s talking to Keonhee, he smiles at his phone so widely that his mouth looks like it may burst from its seams. Occasionally, they’ll video chat, and those are the times when Geonhak can join in and chat with his best friend’s soulmate. Yet still, their favorite method of communication by far seems to be the traditional way; by ink and the canvas they share through their bodies, their skin. 

“Welcome home,” Youngjo tells him warmly. “How was work?”

Geonhak imagines that after someone meets the one person who’s supposed to be-- _is_ perfect, it’d be easy to sink into the delusion that they’re the only person they’ll need for the rest of their lives. That they’d let their lives be consumed by that honeymoon-esque sort of manic love. But Youngjo has never, for a moment, forgotten about him. They spend time together as they always have, with or without Keonhee’s voice in the background. They watch movies. Sometimes, Youngjo lets Geonhak watch him draw. 

“Unusual day,” Geonhak replies. “Someone contacted their soulmate.”

“Oh!” Youngjo’s eyes light up. There’s little doubt that he’s thinking about his own. “That’s quite young, isn’t it?”

Geonhak purses his lips and nods. “I can’t say I’m not worried, but I think she’ll be able to handle it.”

“That’s always good,” Youngjo says. 

Youngjo’s soft and kind and gentle with his words, but sometimes, he takes this to an unfortunate extreme. Since high school, they’ve talked easily about most things, but he has the tendency to walk on eggshells when he talks about soulmates around Geonhak. Even when Youngjo had first made real, tangible contact with Keonhee, Geonhak had to pull teeth in order to get him to tell him the details. 

“What about you, Youngjo?” Geonhak stands behind the couch and props his hands up on top of the backrest. “Anything interesting happen?”

“Well, I picked up a copy of _Inception_ from the library,” Youngjo says excitedly. “I was going to watch it tonight, so if you have nothing you need to do…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. Is it good?”

“You bet.” 

Later, they find themselves huddled underneath Youngjo’s nice silk blanket, the one that’s so dense and heavy that it feels like a third warm body sprawled on top of them. Their legs are tangled together, and Geonhak thinks he can guess which pair of socks Youngjo’s wearing from the way that the fabric feels. It might be the pair with the red roses printed all over them, thin threads woven tightly together like brambles.

“Hey,” Youngjo says, so carefully and quietly that it’s like he’s trying to reassure a small, frightened animal. “The other day. Those nightmares you told me about…?”

_How are you. Do I have to worry about you. Will you be okay._

And Geonhak grimaces at the mention of them, because they’re the reason why he’s dreaded going home throughout the entirety of his workday. It’s not because he didn’t want to see Youngjo-- he always does, but because being immersed in the childlike innocence of his workplace helps him forget about the things he doesn’t enjoy thinking about, and because being at home means that he’d have to face the creeping hours that approach sleep.

“No.” Geonhak would be lying if he said that he’d never lied to Youngjo, but Youngjo worries so much that it’s sometimes necessary. He finds his hand underneath the blanket and grips it tightly in reassurance. “I haven’t had them in a while.”

“Geonhak--” Youngjo sounds like he’s about to say something, but he stops after saying Geonhak’s name. Try as Geonhak might, he’ll never really be able to get away with lying to him.

He purses his lips a bit, pulls more of the blanket over Geonhak’s body, then continues speaking. “Promise me you’ll be okay?”

Geonhak hums. “Yeah.”

And this isn’t a lie. He isn’t entirely sure that he can keep it, but this is the push he’ll need to ensure that he’ll try his best.

* * *

One in twenty.

So much research has been done on soulmates and soulmate bonds, and not a single top scientist or philosopher can come up with a proper _theory_ on why and how they happen. The one in twenty statistic is one of the very few things that are completely clear, completely certain. One in twenty people will not have a soulmate at all in their adult years. This number is almost insignificant at a glance, is low enough so that there’s a certain sense of normalcy to having a soulmate, knowing that there will always be a perfect match waiting. Yet this sense of normalcy is exactly why this statistic is actually staggeringly, alarmingly high. When having a soulmate is normal, but people without soulmates exist, what are those people supposed to do with themselves?

There are ways in which people can find themselves without a soulmate. The first is pretty obvious; be born with a soulmate, but have them die or sever off the connection later in life. The second is to be born without a soulmate in the first place-- a phenomenon that happens, but much like the soulmate bond itself, nobody’s ever found an explanation. Maybe there will never be one. There are the people who have soulmates, the people who had soulmates, and the people who never had soulmates. 

Geonhak does not fall into the latter category. He _remembers_ , remembers a typical early childhood consisting of unexplained bruises on his body and ink stains that defy explanation, feather-light and ghostly with the way they danced and bloomed across his skin whenever he was lucky enough to catch their moments of formation. 

Later in life, as Geonhak slowly learned to pay attention and watch and understand, the shapeless lines and splotches would converge into words, then drawings. Later still, the words turned into simple lists and reminders, simple and bored doodles became elaborate sketches. He’d find out about his soulmate through fragments, such as the notes they’d take about a particularly pretty bird they’d seen or their third weekly reminder in a row to pick up banana milk from the grocery store. They were never directed towards him, specifically, but they never failed to make him smile. Geonhak never wrote or drew anything specific for them, either, but he’d always hoped that they’d see his own words and be tempted to write out that fateful _hello_. 

And just like the way he’d noticed them, he hadn’t immediately paid attention to how they’d stopped until he’d found that they were long gone. It should’ve been sudden, like a blocked current, but the ink on his skin had to wash away before he could realize that they would never bloom again. The little miracles he’d adopted as his sense of normal had simply ceased to be. At the time, he’d thought that there was no use dwelling on this. He hadn’t known his soulmate, really, so what was there to miss?

Yet it’s all been the same since then, Geonhak thinks. The colors in his world had begun to blur together, the sky looks so much greyer than it used to be. He has nightmares and wakes up in the middle of the night in darkness without the ability to fall back asleep until the sun comes up.

Sometimes, he still spots ink stains on his skin, but there’s always a cause for these stains, a logical explanation. He handles whiteboard markers often. He marks his students’ assignments with black or red ink depending on the day. Sometimes, he helps them color, teaching them the best ways to stay within the lines. 

It’s human nature to cling onto slivers of hope, however implausible they may be. Geonhak sometimes hopes that it had all been some long, horrible coincidence-- that one day, he’ll find ink on his skin again, and it’ll writhe and swirl like smoke over a fire and twist into _words_ , into a sentence. It’ll be a message just for him; a cheeky _missed me?_ , maybe. That fateful _hello_ at last, maybe. Or maybe it’ll be just another list, just another doodle, just another wayward reminder. 

Anything.

* * *

It’s the time of the night that Geonhak usually associates with Youngjo’s creative time. Sometimes, he makes music, and the beat would reverberate throughout the walls and floor of their entire apartment. He’d always be so focused and passionate that Geonhak wouldn’t be able to pry him from his workspace even if he had the heart to do so. But this time, it’s laughter that rings through their house instead of music. So he’s in a video call with Keonhee. 

Geonhak can’t really discern the specific words in their conversation, doesn’t even know much of what they usually talk about, but he can tell that they’re having fun, that they’re perfect. He’s happy for them, really, but…

Geonhak gently places a hand on his own heart.

The call goes on for another hour at least, all the while Geonhak mindlessly clicks through ASMR cooking channels and feels himself drift. He doesn’t hear them anymore, not really, but occasional tendrils of Youngjo’s laugh make their way past his headphones. It takes a while before he exhausts all options, closes his laptop, and heads over to the washroom to brush his teeth for the night.

“Heading to bed?” Youngjo peeks his head out from his studio down the hall. “I hope you sleep well, yeah?”

Geonhak grimaces. “I’ll try my very best.”

* * *

Falling asleep isn’t difficult, but sleeping is a horribly daunting task. Geonhak lays in his bed, stares at the ceiling tiles that begin to swirl into stars and darkness when he fails to pay attention for just a moment. The world fades away. 

And as his world fades away, parts of the world fade back in again. He wakes up to grey, grey walls and grey ceilings and grey floors and grey skies. 

It’s a skeleton of a building sculpted from concrete. The walls are open, only reinforced columns and beams fill the space between floors, and Geonhak’s high up enough to feel the wind on his cheeks. If he dares to step away, to chance a glance down the building, he’d see a skyline hundreds of feet below, just barely obscured by fog. 

It’s a horribly familiar setting, a horrible and familiar setting. Wind, the horrible crunch-sound of pieces of concrete breaking loose, and--

There’s footsteps. They’re light and barely there, and Geonhak can hardly tell if they’re coming from above him, near him, or below. He doesn’t have much time to think about them before they, too, fade away.

After that, it’s the usual nightmare for him. The building crumbles, as buildings do, and he frantically searches for a way out with his heart pounding faster than the tempo of the falling rocks above his head. Geonhak follows his instincts, because in these dreams, they’ve yet to be wrong. He runs, runs to a spot where he’d previously encountered stairs. 

There’s no sanctuary to be found. There’s a curious gap where stairs could have been built, but instead, there’s an empty wall. On the end of the wall hangs a mirror in which he can’t even see his own reflection. 

The mirror stays empty until something suddenly flashes by, something that Geonhak’s eyes aren’t nearly quick enough to catch. After staring for a bit longer, he realizes with a jolt that the mirror isn’t even properly reflecting his surroundings. But it’s not a window, it can’t be the window-- it’s on the edge of the building, and it’s hanging from the wall.

The building’s still crumbling. Geonhak forgoes the mirror and continues to run. The wind blows at his back, the wind urges him onwards. 

There are paintings, which is curious to see in the building’s unfinished state, ornate frames clashing against brutalist grey walls, but they’re there. Geonhak runs past them too quickly to notice what they actually are. They’re blurs of teal and sky, the greens of forest and the marguerite-yellows and hyacinth-blues of meadows. In one, he recalls seeing the blurred face of someone unfamiliar, smiling like they’re posing for a modern camera.

The ground shakes. It crumbles beneath him, too, and there’s nothing that he can do. There are footsteps again, faster and more frantic this time, and the world fades back into reality. 

Geonhak wakes up, and life goes on. Time has no choice but to march forward, and Geonhak has no choice but to march along with it, no time to dwell on things, no time to process them. He leaves the thorn in his palm and carries on.

* * *

Geonhak has Joochan as his student teacher today, which is always a good thing. He’s good with kids, and kids like him because they’re all curious about his bright pink hair. He always humors them by making up funny stories about it. Earlier, he’d told Yujin that his hair is pink because he fell into a vat of pink cotton candy as a child her age. Yujin almost seemed to believe him for a moment, but she’d proved much too inquisitive and skeptical to be duped by his stories. 

Geonhak gets along with Joochan well enough, which isn’t saying much because neither of them seem the confrontational type, and Joochan’s a polite kid. It’s the way he follows lesson plans with an almost eager sort of excitement that makes Geonhak especially happy to work with him, and he has a contagious and boyish laugh. The principal likes him, too. There’s little doubt that the school will keep him aboard as a fully-fledged teacher. 

Today, Joochan wears a long-sleeved sweater that’s oversized enough to droop past his palms, concealing his hands unless he’s pointing at something or unless he splays his palm flat on a table. Then, wispy tendrils of several different colors of ink peek out from their spots on his fingertips. 

The class is cutting flowers out of paper, and they’ve been lucky enough to get the nicer materials from the art department to work with. There’s all the usual shades of construction paper and crisp cardstock, but there’s also gold foil and the gluesticks that actually _work_ . Geonhak makes use of this by cutting them in the same shape as his red petals and pasting them back to back while demonstrating the project to the class, which draws several amazed _oohs_ and _ahs_ from them. 

So, the morning flies by. There’s a small teacher’s lounge in Geonhak’s wing of the school, one that’s used by most of the teachers during their lunch break save for Sungyoon from Phys-Ed, who usually opts to eat at the ramen shop down the street instead. The teacher’s lounge itself is unassuming-- a bit sad, even. There’s a single set of chairs around a tiny round table, there’s a couch against a wall with a window decorated with doodles, and there’s a coffee machine, a water dispenser, and a minifridge. 

Dongju’s sitting on one of the chairs and scrolling through his phone. He’s wearing his pink eyeshadow look today, the one with just a little bit of a shimmer on the center of his eyelids. When he notices Geonhak walk in, he greets him with a small wave. 

“Are we getting lunch today?” Geonhak asks while he’s filling his water bottle-- matte steel, sky blue, decorated with sunflowers.

“Mm. I’m heading out early.” Dongju shows hints of a smile. “I’ve got a date with my new boyfriend.”

Geonhak’s mouth falls open. “You’ve got a boyfriend?” 

To that, Dongju only smiles wider, which is as good of an answer as any. 

“And you didn’t tell me?” Geonhak clutches at his chest. ”I’m hurt, Ju. I thought we were friends.”

Dongju reaches out and grabs Geonhak’s free hand, holds it like it’s a grounding point and he’d simply float away otherwise. The stars in his eyes are the same stars as the ones he’d seen in Youngjo’s, twinkling and shining in that exact, familiar way but forming entirely different constellations.

“You’re a work friend. Of course I don’t tell you things.”

Geonhak’s pout widens, and Dongju laughs at him. 

“That’s awesome, though. I’m happy for you.” Geonhak squeezes his hand. “What’s he like? What’s his name?”

Soulmates hardly come up within their conversations. They’ve talked about soulmates twice before; once in which Geonhak had felt at ease enough to let it spill that he doesn’t have one, and Dongju had been sensible enough to not treat him like a walking tragedy ever since. And the other time, well.

Dongju dates around, which admittedly isn’t uncommon for people his age, but he dates like he’s looking for something grounded instead of something fleeting. A dandelion seed carried by the breeze, forever searching for a spot to land. His soulmate simply hadn’t been stable enough of a spot for him. 

And to Geonhak’s amazement, that seems to cause him no grief. It could’ve happened to anyone, Dongju seems to say. If you like your soulmate, you should be with them. If not, then whatever. Nothing more, no room to overthink, no reason to question the stability of the foundation in which so many people have planned their entire lives around for generations and generations. 

“Hwanwoong,” Dongju says reverently, cheeks dimpling on the edges of his heart-shaped smile. 

Geonhak reaches up to ruffle Dongju’s hair. Dongju looks like he wants to complain, but he seems to let it happen when he glances back up at Geonhak’s face. 

“I’m happy for you, Ju,” Geonhak tells him, and he means it.

Geonhak spends the rest of the day watching a cluster of his students paint Joochan’s nails after they finish science and arts and crafts for the day. Joochan ends up with nails as pink as his hair that seem to complete the rest of the colors on his hands. Geonhak considers volunteering himself, but ultimately decides against it. When he tells Dongju about this at the end of the day, just before they both clock out, Dongju sneers and calls him a coward. 

* * *

Geonhak doesn’t immediately realize that he’s dreaming. 

There’s sunlight. There’s clouds. The endless blues of the sky above him. And below, a carpet of soft grass beneath his feet dotted with shades of marguerite-yellow and hyacinth-blue. The wind pulls on the flowers, pulls on Geonhak’s hair with the same sort of gentleness as the grass below. Nothing threatens to crumble and nothing threatens to fall, and that’s why Geonhak doesn’t realize that he’s dreaming. 

There’s no running. This time, he can afford to walk. He can afford to trudge forward slowly, take his time and admire the way patches of longer grass shimmers with the breeze, the way clouds drift languidly through an endless sea. 

The meadow seems to last forever, and maybe it does, but the horizon fails to stay flat. There’s a pavilion up ahead, sharp with its shingles that culminate into a tip that stabs at the sky, and it’s familiar. Because it’s familiar, Geonhak doesn’t recognize it as anything out of the ordinary, but.

There’s someone there, a man with dark, medium-length hair streaked with gold highlights. He’s turned around, facing out the other side of the pavilion, head dipped like he’s reading a book. The outfit he’s wearing isn’t one that Geonhak owns, exactly, but it’s certainly something he’d wear. A plaid sweater vest draped over a shirt with a wrinkled collar. The vest is knitted, decorated with sunflowers. 

Geonhak wants to call out to him, ask who he is, but the words catch in his throat. Instead, he waits for him to look up from his book and notice him in his peripheral vision.

There’s something stunning about him, with his full lips and his vulpine eyes that widen slightly when their eyes meet, so much so that Geonhak considers that he might be dreaming as soon as he sees his face. For a few seconds, neither of them say anything, and the stranger’s face transitions from an expression of mild surprise to that of realization.

“I can’t change anything,” the stranger finally says, and his voice is light, flowing over Geonhak like the wind in the meadow. “I can’t control this place. Can you?”

“Why would you--” Geonhak frowns. “Why would _I_ be able to change anything?”

“Well. Is there anyone else around?”

Concise, like it’s a perfectly logical argument that can’t be challenged, the fact that there being nobody but the two of them would mean that Geonhak has full control over the flowers and grass and sky and wind. And well. There really isn’t anyone else around.

“So this place must be yours.” As the stranger says this, the book disappears from his hands with a shimmer. Geonhak jolts.

“How did you--”

The stranger shrugs. “It’s your dream, but that was my book. I do what I want with it.”

“Like make it disappear?” Geonhak tips his head to the side, watches the stranger’s expression change once again to something of amusement. His lips are only quirking a bit, but that bit of a smile still reflects itself in the way his eyes begin to curve into crescents of their own. “My dream… So am I--”

“Don’t ask that,” the stranger says suddenly, cutting off his sentence just in time. He pauses, then, and takes a deep breath before speaking again.

“I don’t know why, but every time I ask someone this, I never see them again. Yes, you’re dreaming, and this place follows very strange rules.”

“Oh.”

The wind’s easing off the meadow a bit. The pavilion’s clearly old, as while they spoke, the breeze seemed to be strong enough to cause its beams to rattle. It’s familiar, Geonhak thinks once again. In the comforting way, not in the way that makes him uneasy.

He still has yet to decide which category the stranger falls under.

“My name’s Seoho,” the strang-- Seoho says suddenly, as a way to break the silence. 

“Seoho, huh?” The syllables feel nice on his tongue. Somehow, Geonhak thinks that it’s a name he might find himself saying often.

“Geonhak.”

Maybe he should hold out his hand for a handshake, or something, but these are extraordinarily strange conditions in which to meet people. That would feel much too ordinary.

“Tell me about the flowers, Geonhak.” Seoho crouches down to examine one of the flowers that are neither hyacinths nor marguerites. It's red, and its petals are edged with gold like gilded and ornate frames on a painting. Upon a closer glance, the underbelly of its petals are completely covered in a shade of gold that glitters in the sunlight. “They’re very pretty. Do you like flowers?”

Geonhak considers this for a moment.

“The hyacinths are there because my mom liked to plant them around our family home’s yard,” he says carefully. “The marguerites-- well, I don’t even remember. I think I saw them at the park, once.” 

His feet move by their own volition. Before he knows it, he’s leaning down next to Seoho until their faces are level again, but they don’t make eye contact. Seoho’s eyes are a lovely brown.

“And these-- well, I think these are made up.” 

It’s true, and Geonhak thinks it’s fairly obvious. The petal is paper, and the gold is foil. Through the filter of his dreams, they’ve become living flowers with soft petals of gold that manage to reflect sunlight in a way that’s hilariously antithetical to the way they’re textured. 

“Made up, huh?” Seoho lets go of the flower, and it sways easily back “You have a very pretty mind, Geonhak.”

Something in Geonhak flips. 

“I didn’t make any of this happen. I can’t usually--” a pause. “Control my dreams. I mean, I either have nightmares or I dream about nothing.”

“We’re always controlling our dreams on some level.” Seoho taps his fingers against his chin. “But that’s interesting.”

They’re lying down now, facing the sun and the clouds with their backs against the flowers, and Geonhak has no idea how they even got here. Seoho closes his eyes at times, and sometimes, when he laughs, his eyes scrunch up completely into those little crescents. 

“Knowing that it’s a dream can help with that,” Seoho explains, picking at the grass. Every time he plucks out a blade, two more grow in its place, and they’re twice as healthy and tall. “Eventually, you’ll realize that it’s all in your head, that it all has no power over you. Then, you’ll be able to control things.”

Well, he knows that he’s dreaming _now_. Geonhak closes his eyes and tries to concentrate. He tries to imagine himself flying, tries to imagine how 

“It takes practice.” To Geonhak’s surprise, Seoho reaches out to pat him twice on the shoulder. His hands are so cold that his touch shocks Geonhak’s skin even through his clothes.

Geonhak opens his eyes. “How long have you been dreaming like this?”

Seoho hums. “All my life, more or less.”

The flowers sway in the sun and the wind, which has begun to pick up again. They just lay there for a while, enjoying the breeze, and Geonhak enjoys the ghost of Seoho’s company. A rare moment of tranquility. He hadn’t thought that he could feel so at peace even in the waking world, and the waking world is _better_ because when he’s sleeping, he never knows if he can be safe from his own mind. But now, with Seoho, with the clouds and the sun, he feels safe. 

“It’s time for me to wake up,” Seoho murmurs, voice almost lost to a passing gust.

“Already?” Geonhak lifts an eyebrow. “That wasn’t a very long time.”

And Seoho just shrugs. “Time works differently here.” 

Over the course of this dream, the sun has set, coloring the skies in the same warm shades of pink and yellow and sun-stained orange as the flowers below. It’s also begun to rise again, skipping the night entirely. It’s something that should’ve happened over the course of hours, but the sky has been rapidly changing in matters of minutes. 

“Will I see you again?” Geonhak finds himself blurting out.

Seoho purses his lips, and the shape they make is a bit catlike. Geonhak wonders if this is something he does a lot when he thinks.

“I don’t know, Geonhak.” That smile again, and this time, the smile reaches his eyes fully and completely. He’s standing up now, and the sun’s crawled over the horizon a bit-- not trustworthy, absolutely not reflective about the amount of time that’s passed. The slightly weaker rays touch the tendrils of gold in Seoho’s hair, and they glow like they could have been rays of sunlight in their own right. “But I don’t see why not.”

* * *

And for the first time in a long, long time, Geonhak wakes up to the sun in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pilot chapter :D not much happens and seoho gets introduced at like. the very end. but i hope you enjoyed it anyway!! 
> 
> i actually do have all the chapters except the (very short) epilogue written so i'll be posting as i edit them, which means the whole thing should be up Pretty soon. like maybe within the week. so keep your eyes peeled !! that being said, please do tell me your thoughts in the comments because ive actually been working on this for several months so posting this is super terrifying to me and i would love some reassurance <3 thank u for making it this far


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “For you,” Seoho says, handing Geonhak a single windflower that had appeared in his hands in a flourish of glitter. It’s pink, and its petals are rimmed with gold. When he gives it to him, he looks away as if he doesn’t want Geonhak to see his face. Geonhak accepts it with a flustered, muttered thanks.

There’s a fusion place within walking distance of the school, a place where Dongju and Geonhak get lunch on the good days where they have extra minutes on their break. It specializes in sushi, though it’s been serving poke bowls as a newer experiment that has since proved popular with the high school that’s at nearly an equal walking distance. 

Though it seems that it’s also popular with slightly older demographics, such as, say-- student-teachers at an elementary school, and that’s what Dongju orders today. Geonhak goes for his usual order of chicken katsu.

“Tell me about Hwanwoong,” Geonhak says with a nudge to his side. “I hardly know him, Ju. I feel like I’m missing out.”

That makes Dongju snort. 

"He’s a teacher,” Dongju tells him excitedly. 

“Like us?”

“Not exactly. He teaches dance at a studio downtown.” Dongju takes another sip out of his sparkling water. “I sat in on his class. He’s really good at what he does.”

“That’s an interesting date idea.”

“Right?” Geonhak finds himself unable to tell whether Dongju’s being sarcastic or serious sometimes, and this is very much one of those times.

Geonhak doesn’t have any questions he wants to ask him, because despite everything, Dongju looks. Happy. Not quite happy in the way that Youngjo always is, with stars constantly swimming in his eyes and without the ability to think of anything other than his soulmate, but somehow, Geonhak doesn’t find it hard to believe that Dongju will eventually work his way up to that state.

“Did you join in? Learn how to dance?”

Dongju hums meaningfully. “I’ve considered it, but…” he wrinkles his nose. “He doesn’t sweep his floor. It’s all dusty. I can’t lie on a dusty dance floor, I did laundry a _day_ ago.”

Geonhak laughs. “Do they do a lot of floor moves?”

“Too many.”

The fact that people like Dongju exist at all is a huge transgression on everything that’s taught, that’s commonly known about love and soulmates and the ways they overlap and the ways they don’t. Even so, Dongju isn’t like Geonhak. He has a soulmate, and they’ve communicated, and they communicate often. It’s a story that he’s told Geonhak pretty soon after they’ve begun to grow their work friendship into something more substantial. 

“ _Bomin’s sweet_ ,” Dongju had said, thoughtfully. “ _He’s sweet, but he’s not exactly what I’m looking for. He’s too much like me, and I think… I think we just didn’t click_.” 

But they have stayed friends ever since. Dongju doesn’t have ink on his wrist nearly as often as Youngjo does, and it’s never as much as Youngjo has, but it’s because they mostly text. Bomin is one of Dongju’s closest confidantes, and even if they’re not romantically perfect for each other, they’ve maintained such a close relationship that there’s practically no word that describes them better than soulmates.

And yet, they’ve both remained interested in finding someone else. Dongju’s always been vocal at finding someone that clicks with him the way Bomin hadn’t, that can fill in the gaps and get him the way Bomin simply can’t. 

Geonhak is invested in Dongju’s happiness because above all, they’re friends, and Dongju deserves the world. But there’s a little part of him that thinks a little differently; if Dongju can find happiness like this, navigate love outside of the system, maybe there’s hope for him after all.

* * *

That night, in the midst of a dream that he doesn't even register as a dream just yet, Geonhak finds himself standing in front of a simple mirror, stranded in the middle of a strange world that should be far less familiar than it feels to him. When he moves, his reflection moves on its own, reaching right when he reaches left. It takes a moment for him to recognize, from the corners of his vision, that it isn’t actually him behind the mirror. The person in the mirror seems to realize this at the exact same time, looking up at just the moment to catch his gaze. They're not a stranger, not exactly.

“Oh! It’s you again,” Seoho says brightly. “Geonhak, was it? Hi!”

Seoho’s wearing a simple white button-down shirt, the first two buttons left open and exposing just a bit of his chest. Geonhak looks down and finds that he’s wearing the exact same thing, the exact same way. The world behind him is so completely different from the world behind Geonhak that he briefly wonders how he ever thought this was his reflection at a glance.

“This is.” Geonhak puts his hand on the mirror. It’s solid, made from cold glass like any other, and he doesn’t know what else he was expecting. Maybe he thought that his hand would simply phase through, that he would be able to reach into Seoho’s world and press a thumb against the edge of his smile. “So weird.”

“Isn’t it?” Seoho replies with a mysteriously knowing smile. It reminds Geonhak that he’s been navigating this dream world for much longer than he has, that he’s probably seen much stranger things. 

The world beyond the mirror looks nothing like his own. For one, it’s emptier; Geonhak can look behind him and notice a potted plant, four walls around him that are colorful, if not muted, and a couple of paintings hanging from the walls. Nothing exciting, per se, but his environment is almost whimsical compared to the cold concrete surroundings reflected in the mirror. 

“So if I break the glass--”

Seoho’s eyes widen, then he shakes his head fervently. “Don’t break the glass, you bonehead. I might never see you again.”

Geonhak looks at him incredulously. “Why would that happen?” _You want to see me again?_

“I don’t know. The rules here are weird, but there are definitely rules. Best not try anything dangerous.”

“I thought I was awake.” Geonhak looks around, looks at the muted walls, at one painting of an idyllic farmhouse in the grasslands framed in gold. “It all feels so real?”

“It’s hard to tell,” Seoho agrees. He puts a hand finger on his bottom lip-- he has pretty lips. “There are ways to tell if you’re dreaming. It’s something you have to get good at, but there are ways.”

"You're here,” Geonhak says. "Is that a way to tell?"

Seoho grins. “Yeah. I guess it is." 

“How do you know, exactly?” Geonhak asks, choosing his words very, very carefully. There are rules to this world, after all, and words and questions carry a certain level of significance that he doesn’t yet understand. “How do you know this isn’t…”

“Real?” Seoho lets out a small, pretty chuckle. “It’s okay, you can say it. You can’t ask if you’re dreaming, but the real world exists. It’s not like your dreams will get jealous.” 

Geonhak laughs at that, and through eyes narrowed by laughter, he notices that Seoho mirrors his smile through the glass. He smiles in a way that almost hides his eyes, a way that makes his eyes curve even more than his mouth does. Geonhak’s seen him smile before, seen his delighted grin in the sunlight of the meadow in which they’d met for the very first time. He looked beautiful in the light, enthralling in a way that makes it unclear whether it’s the light illuminating his face or his smile illuminating the world around him. Geonhak finds himself smiling wider because of this. 

“It takes training,” Seoho says after a moment of consideration. “You have to start with small things. 

“Small things?”

“How many fingers do you have?”

“Ten,” Geonhak says immediately.

To that, Seoho smiles mysteriously “Check your facts before you declare them.”

And Geonhak does. He almost jumps out of his skin when he notices that _he does not have ten fingers_. His fingers flicker between ten and twelve, an occasional sixth finger appearing on each of his hands depending on when he chooses to take a glance. 

“What the.”

“The rules here are weird,” Seoho repeats, leaning into the counter on his side of the mirror. “So yeah. That’s one way to know. Whenever you think you’re dreaming, check if you have ten fingers.”

"Noted."

Seoho goes on to tell him about the way clocks don't quite make sense, the way their hands never remain in the same place after glancing away for a second. He tells him about how sometimes, his hands could pass through objects that are meant to be solid. And, of course, he tells him about the way mirrors don't work the way they're supposed to, acting as images of everything except that which is actually meant to be reflected. 

“You have to wake up soon, don’t you?” Seoho asks him, after their conversation has dragged on for what feels like forever, yet could be a second. 

Geonhak shrugs. “Eventually.”

“You can’t just stay here,” Seoho says, and it’s the type of voice Geonhak would use to chide the kids in his class. “I can’t stay either.”

Geonhak almost wants to protest. He doesn’t know why, but there’s something inside him that wants to kick and scream and disregard the fact that there’s a world for him to return to, wants to sit here and talk to Seoho until the world burns away. But before he can say anything, the world _does_ burn away, muted walls crumbling to dust. He wakes up to his room’s usual darkness, to his sickeningly familiar 7AM alarm.

He has a life to live, unfortunately. And maybe Seoho does as well. 

But maybe they’ll see each other again, maybe another gate will open between their dreams. After all, that hadn’t been the first time they’d met. Maybe they’ll meet again, and in a perfect world somewhere, maybe _maybe_ means _certainly_. Geonhak knows better than anyone that the world he lives in is anything but perfect, but he knows next to nothing about Seoho’s. And in his mind, this lack of knowledge takes the form of hope. 

* * *

Dongju is Geonhak’s student teacher today, which is something that makes him thoroughly happy because the way Dongju deals with his class is something that’s both heartwarming and delightfully funny to watch. 

Geonhak lets him take over storytime for this reason. He’s reading a book about a dinosaur-- a brontosaurus? Named Terry, who receives a message from his soulmate, but has no way of writing them back on account of the fact that he does not have hands, much less opposable thumbs capable of holding a pen. Luckily for him, he has a friend-- a squirrel named Tim who does have hands, but his hands are much too small to hold Terry’s pen. But luckily, again, for Terry, _Tim_ has a friend who happens to be a _panda--_

This goes on for a while. After all that, with the help of all his little forest friends, Terry does find his soulmate. She’s a pterodactyl, and the question about why _she_ was able to write on herself when Terry couldn’t is never really addressed. Maybe she had her own posse of animals with varying numbers of fingers.

Dohyon asks if animals have soulmates, which Dongju expands on by asking if they’d have any way to know, and this promptly sends the classroom into a collective session of existential crisis. 

“Are you coming with us for drinks tonight?” Dongju asks him when the day’s over and almost all of the students have been picked up from the playground, leaving the building inhabited with only the older kids with after school activities and some of the teachers who had to stay late. 

“Can’t,” Geonhak says, putting his more important files in order. Mid-term report cards are due soon, and although there’s never anything academic to put on a kindergartener’s file, these are things that he’s contractually obligated to fill out. “Sorry, Ju.”

“It’s all good.” Dongju shoots him his doe smile. “Why not? In a rush?”

“I have to go to the airport early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh?” 

“I’m going with a friend. To pick up his friend.”

Dongju lifts an eyebrow. “Your friend’s _friend_?”

He’s almost too observant for his own good. Geonhak rolls his eyes as he shoves the rest of the pieces of paper into his briefcase.

“It’s his soulmate,” he concedes, and this earns him a bout of delighted applause. 

“First meeting?” Geonhak nods, and Dongju claps even harder. A group of passing fifth graders in the hallway glance in their general direction before nonchalantly walking on. “You’re right, that’s huge.”

“It’ll go well,” Geonhak says, believing each word. “They already love each other.”

He doesn’t know how he knows this, exactly. It’s a combination of the way they talk to each other and the way Youngjo talks about Keonhee when he knows he’s not listening, and it’s the type of questions Keonhee asks Youngjo about his life, the way he’s so ready and so excited at the thought of incorporating Geonhak into his life because he already knows that he’s already such a big part of his soulmate’s. 

Dongju snickers like he can read Geonhak’s mind. “Don’t get caught between their mush, please.”

“I’m used to it, don’t worry.”

“Well,” Dongju says, stretching his arms out and almost knocking over the (thankfully plastic) globe on Geonhak’s desk. “Still, I pray for your sanity.”

Geonhak laughs. “I appreciate that.”

* * *

That night, Geonhak wakes up in a familiar place. His heart sinks.

Whenever he dreams about (with) Seoho, they’ve always been somewhere new. He’s here, in the concrete building, so it must logically follow that Seoho won’t be with him, and that he’ll have to run through the usual nightmare by himself. 

So he runs, because that’s the only thing he’s ever known how to do when he finds himself caught in this peculiar world. He runs, and concrete crumbles, pillars buckle, dust falls behind him-- in front of him, if he’s unlucky. But something’s different. 

Geonhak looks at his fingers and counts them. They’re now flickering between eleven and twelve. 

Alright. So it’s a dream, his dream-self thinks. It’s all in his head, and now that he knows this, it shouldn’t have power over him anymore. It’s a dream he’s had before. What does he remember? What can he _do_ about this?

The mirror, he remembers with a jolt. The mirror that hangs on the wall in the place where stairs should’ve been built, but haven’t. The building begins to shake, dust begins to fall from the ceiling like first snow, and Geonhak runs. 

It’s to the left, then to the right, then straight forward, then east. Something creaks sickeningly. Something _gives_ and crumbles and crashes. Geonhak runs, still, runs until he reaches that familiar spot that by some miracle hasn’t yet been blocked by debris or otherwise rendered too dangerous to access. The mirror sits regally on the wall, waiting for him. He approaches it head-on but cannot see his own reflection. 

“Please,” Geonhak says quietly to the mirror, but through the wreckage and the sound of falling rocks outside, his voice is drowned out even to his own ears. He’s asking for a miracle. “Please.”

And his miracle is, against all odds, granted. 

Something rushes by, runs right past, and for a horrible moment Geonhak thinks that Seoho might’ve missed him. But Seoho doubles back a second later, wearing his sunflower-print sweater vest and his white shirt underneath. It’s interesting, Geonhak thinks, how he already has an idea of what his wardrobe’s like.

The building’s still crumbling. Seoho opens his mouth, looks like he’s trying to say something, but Geonhak doesn’t hear a thing. The rules are different in each and every dream.

 _Help me,_ Geonhak mouths.

Seoho looks around, then nods. He frantically points at his own head. Not knowing what else to do, Geonhak imitates him. Nothing happens.

 _What?_ Geonhak mouths again. Seoho puts a hand on his forehead. Then, as if he has an idea, he claps. He lifts his foot and presses down on the mirror. For a moment, his image in the mirror distorts-- then his shoe pops out of the glass, then half of him is through the mirror and in Geonhak’s side of the world.

“Let’s go,” Seoho says, grabbing Geonhak’s arm immediately after his other foot steps through. “Think, Geonhak. Think of anything. Think of something that can help.”

“Can’t you do it?”

“Well, it’s not my dream, is it?”

Time’s running out-- however _differently_ it works in dreams. 

The ground shakes. Something crashes. The ground shakes more, and the building crumbles more, shaking and threatening to give.

“I said something that can help,” Seoho hisses at him.

Despite the rush of abject terror that’s been keeping him frozen, Geonhak replies. “You said _anything_ first.”

“Yes, _anything that can help--_ ”

Seoho stops talking when something approaches on the horizon, knocking over buildings on the skyline in its wake. It’s a creature-- dinosaur-like, with a neck that reaches beyond the height of a skyscraper. Geonhak isn’t quite sure how tall their building is, but countless nights of dreaming have reassured him that he absolutely cannot see the streets from their floor.

When it finally approaches, its neck is just long enough for its head to be level with the floor, but it doesn’t approach any closer than a gap that can only be closed by flying. 

Seoho doesn’t hesitate before he makes the jump to the colossal creature’s head, his jump bringing him further than any person should be capable of. Geonhak stands on the edge. When Seoho reaches the other side, he has to squint to see him clearly. He isn’t sure if he’s wearing his contact lenses in this dream.

“Just fly or something,” Seoho calls out. There’s wind, and it should’ve been too much noise to hear him over, but his voice rings true.

“I can’t just fly?”

“Of course you can just fly. None of this is real.”

Geonhak opts to do the same thing Seoho did. He jumps, and somehow, his legs take him all the dinosaur’s head, to the spot right next to the waiting Seoho. Seoho pats him gingerly on the back. 

“That wasn’t so hard, wasn’t it?”

“Do you ever,” Geonhak says, breathing heavily, “ _shut up_.”

“Didn’t seem to want me to shut up in the mirror.” It’s Geonhak’s mistake for being in the nudging range, because Seoho nudges him hard enough to make him worry about falling off. “When you needed me to save your ass.”

“Very funny.”

It’s safe-- relatively, compared to the building, but that’s not a very high bar to reach. Right after they’re both aboard, the creature begins to move in huge, thundering steps. Neither of them say anything for a while, worried that the smallest sound will send them both reeling.

Of course, it’s Seoho who breaks this silence, and Geonhak’s beginning to wonder if he even has the capability to maintain any sort of prolonged silence at all.

“Hey,” Seoho says, “why an-- is this an apatosaurus?”

“Brontosaurus,” Geonhak corrects him.

“I think you mean an apatosaurus.”

“The book said brontosaurus?”

“It’s probably outdated.” Seoho crosses his legs over the edge of the-- whatever-saurus’ head, which Geonhak now realizes is so terrifyingly high that the ground below them is just _fog_ , that they can barely even see the creature’s _back_. “Brontosaurus is obsolete. You see, a paleontologist discovered the same fossil twice and named them different things. Apatosaurus was first, so they’ve just been calling it that.”

“Huh.” Geonhak knocks on the ground, the brontosaurus' head, and hopes it registers to the creature as a head pat. Everything shakes in response, and he isn’t quite sure if it's a purr or a growl. Would brontosauruses purr _or_ growl? He hopes it’s the former. “Thanks for telling me?”

Seoho shoots him a toothy and too-delighted grin. “You’re welcome!”

They walk a while further, for a few more minutes, to God-knows-where. Clouds pass by underneath them instead of over their heads. 

“Say, Geonhak. Why were you reading a book about dinosaurs in the first place? Are you a paleontologist? Wait, no, a paleontologist would actually know common dinosaur taxonomy.”

Geonhak finds himself growling like the apatosaurus. Now he hopes it _wasn’t_ a purr.

“Oh!” Seoho snaps his fingers. “You’re an elementary teacher, aren’t you?”

“How’d you come to that conclusion?”

“Tell me if I’m wrong first. Don’t just _talk to me_ like I’m wrong. Wait.” Seoho suddenly crosses his legs and puts his arms in an obnoxiously fake thinking position. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Geonhak grumbles in reluctant agreement, feeling his ears burn up despite the fact that he doesn’t usually feel ashamed about his profession. From the way Seoho talks, he half-expects him to make fun of him for it, to begin talking about how annoying children are and how he wouldn’t work with them for a million dollars.

“It suits you,” Seoho says instead. “You’re like a big friendly dog. I bet kids love you.”

“A big friendly...dog?”

Seoho reaches out and pats him on the head. Geonhak ducks his head down and tries to shake Seoho’s hand off like it’s a flea, which only really serves to delight Seoho all the more. 

“Since you guessed my occupation so succinctly,” Geonhak says, dodging another one of Seoho’s pats, “I think it’s only fair that I get a chance as well.”

Seoho hums. “I’d like to see you try.”

“A comedian? No, you’d have to be funny.” Geonhak copies Seoho’s obnoxious little thinking position. “A clown. Final answer.” 

“No, but I’ve always wanted to be one.”

“Wait, a _clown_?”

“I’m actually an architect,” Seoho says cheerfully, pointedly ignoring his interjection. “That building we were just in? With the brutalist walls? So ugly. Why couldn’t we have gone to the meadow?”

An architect. It doesn’t make sense to Geonhak, not quite, but he isn’t exactly in a position where he can judge that. If Seoho has any dreams of his own, which he’s said that he does and which seems to be the case from what he’s glimpsed within the mirror, then he hasn’t really had the chance to be inside them yet. He hasn’t gotten to see Seoho’s mind, all the symbols of his hopes and fears, like Seoho’s gotten to see his.

This idea inadvertently makes Geonhak shiver. 

“We can go there right now,” he says. “I think. I don’t know, actually.”

And that makes Geonhak consider, too, because that’s the first piece of personal information he’d ever shared about himself besides his name. Seoho’s such an endless mystery to him, and he wants so badly to pry further, to ask about his friends, his life, his soulmate-- but something tells him that he won’t get anything out of it. 

“That’s sweet.” Seoho tips his head to the side ever so slightly, and tendrils of dim sunlight are caught in his hair. “I’d love to, but I have to go to work soon.”

* * *

“I told him to text me as soon as he lands,” Youngjo’s eyes are sparkling, as they do when it comes to most Keonhee-related situations, but they’re also filled with an uncharacteristic “Do you think he’s okay?”

Geonhak drapes his arm around Youngjo’s shoulders. Youngjo seems to lean in instinctively, closing his eyes when Geonhak begins to gently knead at his back.

“The flight’s delayed, right?” Geonhak asks, and Youngjo makes his response known with the tiniest of nods. “He’ll be here soon. Gluing your eyes to your phone won’t make it happen any faster.”

They’d gotten here at about nine in the morning, leaving just after sunrise and making it to the airport when the sun had begun to shine into the building’s giant windows. Keonhee’s plane was supposed to arrive at nine thirty, but there’s been notice of a thirty-minute delay. It’s now almost ten, and there’s no sign of the plane yet.

“I know. But I can’t help but worry, you know?” Youngjo looks up again, and somehow, it’s like his eyes are sparkling even brighter than before. “I can’t believe I’m meeting him, Hak.”

“I can.” Geonhak presses a hand on Youngjo’s, effectively keeping him from opening his phone for the fifth time in two minutes. “You’re ready for this. I know you are. You know you are.”

“It’s funny,” Youngjo says. “I think I’m in love with him.”

Geonhak’s lip quirks. 

“But I’m also scared.” Youngjo takes a deep breath. “Does he love _me_?”

“Of course.” Geonhak smiles and looks away. “You’re very loveable, you know that?”

Keonhee’s plane lands within the next half-hour, and the announcement goes over the intercom just as Youngjo finally, finally receives that text. Youngjo calls him just to chastise him about having his phone on while he’s still on the plane. 

“They said it was safe to take our phones off airplane mode.” Keonhee’s voice comes out as a whine on speaker, which makes both Youngjo and Geonhak laugh. “Be nice to me, I had a long flight!”

Keonhee’s wearing a long trench coat that almost trails on the ground, which is quite impressive, because he’s _tall_. His eyes light up as he recognizes Youngjo and (probably) Geonhak, and as soon as he’s past the gate, he envelops the two of them into a very tight and very warm hug. 

“I think I might be dreaming,” Keonhee breathes, holding onto both of Youngjo’s hands. “You’re so--”

“Pretty? Handsome?” Youngjo says with a smirk.

“Beautiful.”

That manages to shut him up, and the thought of a _compliment_ having the ability to make _Youngjo_ flustered makes Geonhak laugh. He finds himself hoping that he stays around for a while.

Geonhak watches as the two of them fall into an easy sort of rhythm with each other, but Keonhee’s so considerate and Youngjo loves Geonhak so much that _of course_ they make sure that Geonhak never feels left out while he’s with the two of them, so the three of them fall into a rhythm as well-- never mind how obvious it is that they can’t wait to dissipate into their own little world. Despite that, Geonhak genuinely has fun with them, eating airport food and laughing as Keonhee complains about how expensive everything is in the outlet stores. 

“You’re beautiful, too,” Youngjo tells Keonhee at some point, linking his arms with the sleeve of Keonhee’s oversized trench coat. Geonhak doesn’t miss the way Keonhee’s entire face colors. 

Keonhee’s hotel is just a short drive away, and Geonhak drives them there, dropping them off while it’s late into the afternoon. It’s supposed to be just a short stay, but Keonhee hasn’t booked return tickets yet, so who’s to say how long they’ll take.

“When are you coming home?” Geonhak asks Youngjo, handing off one of Keonhee’s luggage cases to him. It’s leopard-printed, so ugly that it may as well have been one of Youngjo’s own. 

Youngjo just shrugs with a mysterious smile. “You know. Whenever.”

“Sounds good to me. Don’t stay out too long.” Geonhak puts a hand on Youngjo’s shoulder, and Youngjo’s smile just widens. “The house will get lonely.”

“Geonhakkie,” Youngjo coos, and Geonhak immediately finds himself regretting his own words. “Are you saying you’ll miss me?”

“You’re giving yourself too much credit,” Geonhak says. “The cleaning will get a lot easier, so maybe not--”

That makes Youngjo exclaim at him, threatening to toss the luggage in his hands, restrained only by Keonhee begging him not to. Geonhak can barely contain his own laughter when he finally stumbles out of the lobby and into his car. He drives home alone on the rays of the slowly setting sun and the highways filled with weekend traffic. 

* * *

That night, Geonhak falls asleep to silence instead of the muffled sounds of Youngjo talking to Keonhee on the phone that he’d grown so used to. He wakes up somewhere eerily familiar, but it’s not the building, and the sight of concrete doesn’t quite make his heart sink. 

No, this isn’t his nightmare. He’d conquered that. This is a different dream, and it’s not something he’d ever think to dream about. He’s laying on grass, and he’s on a hill that overlooks a city of concrete in the near distance. The grass is more grey than green, however, and the sky is curiously muddled. 

“Hey. Get up, lazybones.”

Geonhak blearily tilts his chin up. Seoho’s looking down on him and he’s wearing something that he’s never worn in Geonhak’s dreams. Here, he’s dressed like he’d just clocked out of the office with his crisply-ironed shirt-- save for the wrinkles around the collar-- and mirror-polished leather shoes. 

“Why don’t you get down here?” Geonhak says. Seoho shrugs like that’s not something he can argue against and sits down next to him on the grass.

Still, Seoho remains upright instead of fully lying down, so Geonhak eventually sits up as well. The wind tugs at his hair like an insistent child. 

“I’ve been wanting to have you here for a while, now,” Seoho says, and those simple words sound like something of an arcane confession. “Come on. Let me show you around.”

The skies may be grey, but Seoho’s world is anything but dreary. The fields outside the city have been dotted with flowers, and Seoho conjures up more windflowers as they walk, forming something of a trail of colors behind them. (One of the flowers, Geonhak notices, is the same nonexistent pink-and-gold flower that appeared in the field where they met. He thinks to ask about it, but he doesn’t.) Squirrels and rabbits stare at them curiously before scurrying away. 

“For you,” Seoho says, handing Geonhak a single windflower that had appeared in his hands in a flourish of glitter. It’s pink, and its petals are rimmed with gold. When he gives it to him, he looks away as if he doesn’t want Geonhak to see his face. Geonhak accepts it with a flustered, muttered _thanks_. 

Eventually, they settle down on a bench over a flat patch of grass just outside the city gates. With a cliff above them on one side and the jungle of buildings on another, they’re relatively sheltered from the wind, but it still whistles and whispers in the sky above.

“It’s peaceful here,” Geonhak comments. 

“Isn’t it?” Seoho replies, sounding oddly proud. It’s exceedingly difficult to tell what he’s feeling from just looking at him, but now, his eyes are glittering. 

“Yeah,” Geonhak tells him, just to see the light in his eyes grow even brighter. 

“I like this place a lot better than reality,” Seoho says. “I can do whatever I want here.” 

It’s strange to Geonhak, who’s spent so long deathly afraid of falling asleep precisely because of his dreams and how little he can control them. 

The wind’s picking up now. Instead of whistling, it’s begun to howl, currents visibly swirling. Geonhak feels a column of it rush past his ear. The two of them sit and say nothing; the wind more than fills out the silence. 

“Hey, Seoho,” Geonhak ventures when the wind calms down again, twirling the windflower between his fingers, “why is there wind?”

He doesn’t miss the way Seoho immediately perks up. “Oh! I know this one! Wind happens because gasses like moving from areas of high pressure to low pressure, right? And--”

“No,” Geonhak lets out a chuckle and readjusts his arms. This inadvertently allows their hands to brush together on the bench. Seoho’s skin feels cold, but he’s the one who trembles at the contact. “No, Seoho. I mean, why is there so much wind in your dream.”

Seoho blinks the wind out of his eyes. “There was wind in your dream, too,” he reasons. 

“That was a nightmare. The wind just added to it.” Geonhak bites his lip. “The meadow-- that was just a breeze, wasn’t it? This is more than that.”

“I don’t know, actually.” Seoho closes his eyes, and as he does, a stray gust blows a strand of his gold-highlighted hair into his face. “It’s one of the few things I can’t control.”

For the first time ever, his voice sounds small. Scared.

A couple of flowers bloom spontaneously in the small patch of grass. There’s a few more windflowers, something that looks like a daffodil, and most curiously, a blue hyacinth. 

“Your mind,” Geonhak says with a grin. 

“What about it?”

“It’s very pretty.”

This manages to render Seoho silent. 

Another flower blooms on the field. The wind picks up, tugging a petal free from one of the red windflowers and sailing off with it into the sky.

“I need to wake up soon.” When Seoho finally speaks, he sounds like he’s speaking from far, far away. “Got some buildings to design, you know?”

“I’m sure they’ll be pretty, too.” Geonhak’s still grinning. “See you, Seoho.”

“Maybe,” Seoho replies, and it’s not quite clear which one of Geonhak’s sentiments he’s replying to. Geonhak hopes it’s the former, because he’s already starting to accept Seoho’s presence in his life as a given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mm this definitely isn't one of my best chapters, but i hope this was a satisfying update anyhow <3 it's 3am here lol goodnight


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Throughout their short time together, they’ve dreamed many, many dreams. Seoho dreams of grassy fields and meadows filled with hyacinths, sometimes, and Geonhak dreams of grand concrete jungles with indiscernible grids, sometimes. Rarely do they dream of the same place twice, and even with the entire world in their hands, even with the ability to shape clouds and move mountains, rarely do they do much more than sit down and simply talk. They’ve dreamed together so many times that seeing Seoho feels as natural as breathing, and talking to him feels like coming home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nsfw warning near the end. the insect stuff comes into play this chapter too

“I don’t know how you do it,” Dongju says. “You got them interested in how _wind_ works.”

Geonhak’s busy scrubbing the marker off of the whiteboard, the little doodles that would have looked like drawings for a soulmate had they been scribbled on his skin. 

“I’ve already told you, Ju,” he says, “all I had to do was explain it to them.”

“They don’t usually find science interesting,” Dongju notes, reclining on one of the desks. 

Lately, Dongju’s been growing his hair out. While he’s tried a handful of colors, he’s never had his hair grow past his ears, only using hints of product to give it a little more volume. Now, it looks like he has a bit of a mullet with his dark hairs brushing against the back collar of his work shirt. It’s a surprisingly good look on him. He’s also talked about dying his hair blond, which Geonhak isn’t so sure about, but Dongju could probably make _anything_ look good.

And what he says is true. The kids prefer stories, and while there’s a point to be made about science being stories that comprise the word, there’s no stories of dragons and brave knights and princesses to be told about in this subject. 

“It’s hard not to make science interesting,” Geonhak protests, “science _is_ interesting.”

Of course, he’s thinking about Seoho when he says this. Seoho, and the way his eyes light up and his smile stretches all the way across his face whenever he gets to talk about something he’s interested in, something he knows about. More often than not, it’d be something that Geonhak’s never heard of or even bothered to think about, but it’d be such an interesting piece of insight that Geonhak would find himself thinking about it for entire days that follow. He’d gotten a lot more curious since Seoho had found his way into his life. Dreams?

Dongju scoffs. “Have you always been this much of a nerd?”

“Don’t talk to me like that, I’m technically your supervisor right now.”

“Alright, alright!” Dongju throws out his hands. ”Don’t write me up!”

Geonhak squints at him. “What are you doing in my classroom, anyway? Aren’t you going to have your break in the lounge?”

To that, Dongju bats his eyes at him like the annoying little fawn he is. “Yeah? What if I wanted to spend time with you?”

“I’d be terribly suspicious. Do you want something from me?” 

Dongju doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he pursues his lips in a way that’s not unlike what the students in his class do, all too young and not yet familiar with what they're allowed to do and what they’re allowed to ask for. 

“Well, I do have a question,” Dongju says carefully.

“Right, then. What’s up?”

Dongju chews on his bottom lip. 

“So, Hwanwoong and I, right? We’re like, together.”

“You definitely seem to be,” Geonhak says, thinking about the way Dongju talks about him and all the little dates they go on a couple of times each week. He’s seen them around town, even, and they’re even clingier when they think they’re alone. 

“He can be so, so irritating.”

“Uh huh.”

“He makes fun of me for no reason and whenever I make fun of him in the same way he gets all grouchy about it. Yesterday, he wouldn’t even talk to me for an hour.” Dongju rolls his eyes. “Hypocritical, right?”

“Mm. Sounds like it.”

“But the thing is. Even when we fight. We’re always like, okay about it afterwards? We talk about our feelings, we forgive each other, and everything’s okay, and everything feels like it’s just in good fun?” Dongju takes a deep breath. “And he’s such a good boyfriend, it’s infuriating. I hate him. He pays attention to my needs, takes me on dates, and--”

Geonhak’s head begins to spin. “Ju, please slow down.”

“Sorry, it’s just--” Oddly, Dongju looks a little desperate. “He makes me feel things, okay? This sounds so stupid, but. There’s something incredibly gross and wiggly in my ribcage whenever he kisses me or whenever he rambles to me about the intricacies of one of his choreographies and it’s like. You know those gross millipedes in some of the nonfiction dinosaur books in the library?”

“Okay. This is getting a little graphic.”

“It’s like one of them’s squirming around my ribcage and popping in and out of my heart--” Dongju suddenly pauses. Geonhak hears footsteps behind him.

It’s one of their coworkers. “Hello, Geonhak,” he greets cheerfully, then turns his head around with a nod. “Dongju.”

“Hello, Sungyoon,” Dongju replies, a bit flustered.

Sungyoon walks by them both without initiating a conversation. He grabs a basket of erasers from the back of the classroom, then leaves.

“I think you just like him, Dongju,” Geonhak says to him in a hushed tone. “You really, really like him.”

Dongju frowns. “You think so?” Suddenly, he looks up, doe-eyes widening. “Is this what meeting your soulmate is supposed to feel like?”

An unexplainable pang hits Geonhak’s chest.

“Yeah. Probably.” Geonhak reaches out and gently pats him on the shoulder. “Congratulations, though. You’ve got to introduce me sometime. I’d love to meet the person who could plant a millipede into _Son Dongju’s_ heart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Hey, _Geonhak, come back--_ ”

* * *

“How’s Youngjo and Keonhee?” Seoho asks. Light almost doesn’t make it in here, but Geonhak can still make out the color of his eyes from the bits of sunset that shine through the cracks in the ceiling. Today, he’s wearing a simple orange hoodie with sleeves that extend past his hands. It’s a color that suits him well, and it’s a sweater that’s so well-worn that its threads have begun to unravel at the edges. 

Throughout their short time together, they’ve dreamed many, many dreams. Seoho dreams of grassy fields and meadows filled with hyacinths, sometimes, and Geonhak dreams of grand concrete jungles with indiscernible grids, sometimes. Rarely do they dream of the same place twice, and even with the entire world in their hands, even with the ability to shape clouds and move mountains, rarely do they do much more than sit down and simply _talk._ They’ve dreamed together so many times that seeing Seoho feels as natural as breathing, and talking to him feels like coming home. 

It’s Geonhak’s dream, clearly, but it isn’t quite the crumbling building or the grassy meadow. Like most dreams, Geonhak doesn’t remember how it began, but he remembers meeting Seoho on the front steps of an empty schoolhouse. The doors opened easily, too easily, and the floors clearly haven’t been dusted in a long, long time. 

“Youngjo’s still at Keonhee’s hotel,” Geonhak says slowly. “I don’t know what they’ve been doing, but.” This makes Seoho snicker, because of course it does. 

“How long has it been?” Seoho asks, clearly struggling to hold in his laughter.

They’re travelling around the empty hallways like they’re in school again, staying way past hours to wait for a band concert or a sports game, but the building’s state of disrepair would indicate that if they even ever happened, there would be no such activities held here ever again. It’s a crumbling building, sure, but instead of the imminent threat of falling debris, the place fills Geonhak with a creeping sense of longing and nostalgia.

“Just over two weeks,” Geonhak replies. “It’s fine, they call me, but. I’ve just been lonely, you know?”

Seoho makes a sympathetic noise. “Why do you have to feel lonely? You have me.” 

Geonhak doesn’t resist the small smile that spreads across his face. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

The hallways are lined with lockers. At some point, they come across a rectangular hole in the wall that might’ve previously had a door installed, but here, it leads directly to the playground.

“They’re soulmates, right?” 

“Yeah.”

“They must act disgusting around each other.”

“Oh, they certainly do.” Geonhak says this while shuddering slightly, thinking about their entire dictionary of pet-names and the like. “Just be glad you don’t have to witness it. I called Youngjo the other day, and--”

Seoho wrinkles his nose and bats Geonhak away like an agitated cat. “I don’t need to know the details, Hak.”

The small moment of silence is filled by a dying breeze that blows over them. The playground looks relatively new compared to the school, all plastic slides with metal pillars and mulch-like wood shavings scattered all over the ground.

“I’m glad they’re not around, sometimes, but I miss it, you know? The energy they have.” Geonhak looks off into the distance, then back at Seoho, who’s still listening intently. “There’s something about finding your soulmate. It’s something beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” Seoho repeats, and it sounds like it’s something he’s unsure about more than something he’s agreeing with. “You sound like you’ve met yours already.”

Geonhak laughs coldly when he doesn’t mean to. Seoho shoots him a confused glance, but he says nothing of it. 

They walk further out. There’s a swing on the playground, and Geonhak makes a beeline for it. Seoho rolls his eyes and mutters something about how the kindergarteners he teaches have probably managed to rub off on him. 

Seoho locks their hands together, just for fun-- or so he says. His hands are too cold, but Geonhak finds an odd sort of comfort in that. It’s like the initial coolness of a set of blankets in the wintertime, something that promises warmth without fulfilling it at all in the present. 

Geonhak still remembers how to swing. On the swings, they talk about everything, and nothing. Geonhak thinks about the thing Dongju said about millipedes, and that comes up. This, unsurprisingly, makes Seoho think about something that seems like it should be completely unrelated.

“You know,” Seoho begins, putting a hand on his chin. “If dragons were real, I highly doubt they’d be reptiles.”

“What would they be, then?” Geonhak’s high up now. He reaches the top of the swing, then kicks forward as he drifts back down. “Birds?”

“Birds are basically reptiles,” Seoho tells him dismissively. Geonhak has a number of questions, but he continues speaking before he could ask. 

“So. Not birds, not reptiles. Mammals, then?”

Seoho thinks for a moment. “I think they’d be insects. I think that’d be interesting.”

Geonhak lets out a disbelieving laugh. “What the fuck?”

“No, I mean, _think_ about it. Chordates never have more than four appendages. Dragons would need to have six. And you know what has six appendages? Insects--”

“They have six legs and wings. Would the dragon have six legs?”

“They might! And I’m pretty sure there are insects with four legs?”

“ _Insects_ with four legs?”

“Can we summon one, Hak?” Seoho turns to him with more excitement in his expression than Geonhak’s ever seen. “Please?”

“Not in my dream. Do it in your own.” 

Seoho’s eyes sparkle dangerously. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Geonhak looks at him and shakes his head. “One of these days, I’m going to have to find a way to kick you out of my mind forever.”

“Come on now, you don’t have to do that.” Seoho nudges him, almost knocking him out of his swing. He sounds like he’s having fun, like he’s a petulant child, but like a petulant child, there’s a modicum of genuine upset clinging to his voice. Out of consideration, Geonhak drops it. He feels the edges of regret’s claws creep up his throat. 

* * *

Youngjo comes home eventually, and Geonhak drives far to pick him up. Life’s supposed to return to normal, more or less, but their life feels much less than typical. More sunlight comes in through their windows in the morning now-- or maybe that’s just the light that comes off of Youngjo’s smile now. For some reason, their floors are a lot cleaner these days. 

Youngjo continues to produce music, but he lets Geonhak listen to samples far more often than he used to, and it’s far brighter than what he’d usually make. 

For completely unrelated reasons, Geonhak’s sure, he _never_ stops talking about Keonhee.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Geonhak tells him one day while they’re washing last night’s dishes in the kitchen.

Youngjo takes his hands. Then, he spins him around like they’re waltzing.

“You’ll be happy, too,” he says affirmatively, with more confidence than Geonhak will ever have for himself.

Everything feels lighter, but something heavy continues to weigh down on Geonhak’s shoulders. Briefly, Geonhak wonders if he can be like Youngjo someday, wonders if he can ever be so light and unconcerned and happy. Wonders if he’ll ever be able to cherish someone as much as Youngjo cherishes the soulmate he’d met not more than a couple of weeks ago.

But his life, as he’s known for a long, long time, will never be so simple. There’s a very small percentage of people who he might be able to call his someday without any measure of concern, 

And now, it seems like his heart is starting to belong to someone from a different world entirely.

Seoho can’t possibly be a figment of his imagination, right? It’s not like he can just disappear someday-- that’d be too cruel, almost comically so. He’s too complete, too much of a person, too perfect. Too perfect for Geonhak, or for the real world.

Maybe that’s exactly the problem. 

* * *

Geonhak’s starting to get a lot better at this.

He doesn’t know if he’s gotten better at dreaming, necessarily, but he’s certainly gotten better at figuring out when he’s dreaming and when he isn’t. This time, it occurs to him almost immediately, and that has nothing to do with the strange creature that’s been swooping over his head, circling the sky around him like a giant vulture.

It’s a millipede-- at least, that’s what Geonhak thought it was at first, but its gargantuan body is supported by four spindly lizard legs. It has wings, too, but they’re nothing like insect wings. They’re bat wings, five fingers each held together by membrane. 

And it breathes _fire_. It doesn’t seem to be attacking Geonhak directly, but one of its flame bursts manage to land in a spot that would’ve incinerated him if he hadn’t been moving around. 

When the creature swoops over again, Geonhak catches a glimpse of a figure perched over its neck. He squints and notices that Seoho’s piloting it. 

“Aren’t you getting on?” Seoho yells from the creature’s back after he flies within earshot. “Come on!” 

The beast lands right in front of Geonhak, and the earth shakes as soon as its feet make contact with the ground. 

And that’s how Geonhak finds himself flying in the sky on the horrifying lovechild of a millipede, a bombardier beetle, and a dragon. 

Being this high up in a dream isn’t a very new experience to either of them at this point, but the creature’s pattern of flight is very different from the methodical steps of the giant apatosaurus. Wind rushes past Geonhak’s ears much faster, and his head spins so much more, feeling lighter than the air itself. The place they’re flying over is almost familiar, but also almost not. It’s a meadow, but they’re too high up for Geonhak to recognize any of the flowers, and the topography is alien enough with all of its subtle hills and slight cliffs for him to realize that it’s not a place he’d ever dreamed about. It’s Seoho’s dream, and he’s making good on their agreement.

Soon enough, the meadow fades out of visibility entirely as they fly above the clouds. The air grows thinner. Somehow, Geonhak’s lightheaded. At first, he holds onto his portion of the bug’s exoskeleton for support, later on finding that he’d put both hands on Seoho’s shoulders at some point throughout the ride.

“You know,” Geonhak says, having been reminded of something. He doesn’t know why he says it-- maybe it’s the altitude or the velocity messing with his head. “My friend says that being in love is like having a colony of millipedes crawling around in your ribcage.”

Seoho winces, then wrinkles his nose. “That doesn’t sound pleasant at all.”

Geonhak makes a noise of agreement.

“Your friend, and the person they’re in love with.” Seoho begins the sentence like he’s about to ask a question, but pauses midway through. “Are they…”

“Soulmates?” Geonhak steadies his grip on Seoho’s shoulders. “No, actually.” 

“Oh.”

“But they may as well have been,” Geonhak adds.

Seoho looks off into the distance ahead of them. “I guess that’s nice,” he says. “Maybe it’s whoever their soulmate was supposed to be.”

“That would mean that the soulmate system made a mistake,” Geonhak pipes up weakly. Seoho visibly tenses, but doesn’t directly respond.

The wind picks up again, a sinister storm without rain or thunder. To them, it’s just an extra burst of good air on their insect-dragon’s wings. 

“Millipedes when you meet your soulmate, huh.” A wry smile worms its way onto Seoho’s face. “It’s a good thing that I don’t have one, then.” 

A beat. 

“Oh, you too?”

And that makes Seoho recoil in surprise, almost falling off his saddle in the process. “You?”

The millipede’s body twists in the sky, somewhat, forcing Geonhak to lose his grip on Seoho’s shoulders. He regains his stability by wrapping both of his hands around Seoho’s waist, which makes him tense up. 

“I’m more surprised about you,” Geonhak says. The millipede twists again. 

Because Seoho laughs at everything he says, smiles whenever he teases and gets a rise out of him. He doesn’t seem like he would, _should_ be part of the one in twenty. Still, Geonhak’s noticed tiny things about him, about the way he seems to laugh on reflex instead of out of genuine happiness, about the smile that reaches his eyes but doesn’t quite pervade them. With these little things, and Seoho’s admission that he doesn’t have a soulmate, Geonhak gets the sudden and cold realization that he might not know what Seoho’s like when he’s genuinely happy. 

Seoho closes his eyes. “Of course you are. You know you better than you know me.”

“Then it’s the same for you, isn’t it?”

“I guess, but it’s just.” Seoho’s hands visibly tighten on the reins. “You’re not--”

“Not?”

“You’re not like me,” Seoho says, and with that, he’s staring off into the distance again. “You’re. Whole.”

Geonhak doesn’t feel _whole_ in the slightest, has never felt whole all his life. Not when he’d watch the lines on his skin manifest and fade, day in and day out, and especially not after the ink had stopped appearing altogether. No, in the waking world, he’s never been _whole_ , but…

“Were you born without a soulmate?”

“No,” Geonhak tells him earnestly. Seoho hums. 

“I wonder which one of us has it worse,” he muses. 

“I can’t imagine being normal, knowing that you’ll be loved someday, and suddenly-- nothing.” The grand’s visible now, and although they’re not in the same meadow, there are flowers dotting grassy fields. Seoho seems to have gotten better at maintaining control over the creature; it’s been thrashing less, twisting less. “I’ve always had nothing. I think that’s not as bad.”

That’s true, Geonhak thinks. But he also can’t imagine how lonely the _nothing_ must have been, how far the _nothing_ must have spread from the moment Seoho became aware of soulmates in the first place. 

The wind picks up. It’s pulling at him now, especially strong, and Geonhak thinks that it’s trying to pull him into the grey skies. away, away, and away. Seoho glances back at him and smiles as casually as Geonhak’s ever seen him smile.

“So, shall we see if this thing can do any tricks?”

* * *

Dongju seems to have been waiting for Geonhak outside the school for a while now, tapping his foot impatiently on the concrete. 

“Sorry,” Geonhak says breathlessly. “Had to stay for a bit. Joochan needed my help with something.”

“All good,” Dongju replies. Geonhak doesn’t know if he’s imagining the nervousness behind the smile on his face.

Usually, whenever they go somewhere together, Geonhak drives. Dongju always says it’s because his car is much too nice to be driven into downtown, but Geonhak would always insist that it’s because they both agree he’s the better driver. 

It seems like he’s justified this time, as Dongju’s car is parked just inches away from some poor teacher’s coupe. To Geonhak’s relief, Dongju manages to get out of the parking spot with little issue, but it’s not without a few minutes of struggle. 

They make it downtown without any further hiccups with Dongju’s playlist of musical theatre songs blaring throughout his car. Hwanwoong’s studio is located on the second floor of a boxing gym’s storefront. It’s a simple place, with nothing more than an office and the dance studio itself, but it’s got a certain charm to it. Hwanwoong, himself, is sitting on one of the benches looking at his phone. A rare moment of rest. 

“Hwanwoong?” Geonhak says, extending a hand. Hwanwoong looks up, then reaches his own hand out to shake it.

“Geonhak, right?” He smiles. “It’s good to meet you.”

Hwanwoong certainly matches Dongju’s intensity. Geonhak only has to talk with him for a while to learn that while they’re alike in many important ways, Hwanwoong’s deliberately passionate about everything he chooses to talk about.

It’s difficult to separate the two of them, two. Whenever there’s a spare moment, Hwanwoong has his hand resting on the small of Dongju’s back, or Dongju casually slings an arm around Hwanwoong’s petite shoulders. They easily fall into bickering, but like Dongju said, everything feels like it’s all in good fun. It’s sweet.

It’s nice to know that Dongju found someone like him. ( _Because if Dongju can find happiness like this, navigate love outside of the system, maybe there’s hope for him after all._ )

“I’m glad you got along,” Dongju says to him after everything’s said and done and he’s driving Geonhak back to his apartment. “Honestly, this felt more important than him meeting my parents.”

Geonhak blinks at him. “Why?”

“My parents are. Traditional, you know. They wouldn’t have approved of anyone outside of my soulmate.” There’s a light, cold chuckle clinging to Dongju’s voice. “And you’re a great person. I think anyone would be lucky to know you. So it’s nice to know that you like Woong.”

“Huh.” Geonhak looks out at the road. The sky’s getting dark now, the buildings are rushing by, and the streetlights have begun to lazily come alive. “That’s literally the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Dongju snickers. “Don’t get used to it, Hak.” Geonhak nudges him in retaliation.

* * *

It should be Geonhak’s turn to dream-- after all, there’s a pattern of sorts, and being in his dream would abide by that pattern. And yet, there are so many signs that would indicate that they’re in Seoho’s dream instead. Concrete buildings tower high into the sky. They’re on one of the rooftops at the heart of this empty urban jungle. Geonhak is just a little acrophobic, but he’s just a little braver here. It may be because he’s with Seoho. At the same time, it may simply be the fact that he’s been through worse, that dreams can’t hurt him. 

“Hey,” 

Seoho nods back. One corner of his mouth is quirked up slightly. “Hey.”

And it’s just them. They stand together at the edge of the world, the way it’s always been, the way it’s supposed to be, but it feels different, somehow. Geonhak finds himself smiling at this and Seoho’s goofy expression.

“You’re doing well, I hope?”

Maybe it’s the absurd simplicity of the question that makes Seoho laugh, and maybe it’s for that very same reason why he surges forward and holds Geonhak by his shoulder. His touch is cold through the fabric of his shirt. It’s dizzying when it happens, and they’re a bit of a confusing mess when they finally crash against each other like waves, a destructive convergence between rival winds. Seoho’s lips are cold, too. Soft. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t--” Geonhak pauses. “I don’t know what came over me.”

And Seoho just leans forward and kisses him again. It’s a bit softer when he does it, a bit kinder, but it's somehow no less destructive.

“Don’t apologize,” he says with a slight smile, murmuring against him. “Please. You’re going to make me feel bad.”

A gust blows over them and tugs at Geonhak’s hair. A moment later, it disappears.

“Wind,” Geonhak mutters, allowing his eyes to flutter closed against the breeze. “I thought it was my turn to dream.”

Seoho laughs against his mouth, and it’s such a beautiful sound, a beautiful movement when it brushes against his lips. “It’s not all that clear anymore, I’m afraid.”

Geonhak doesn’t realize, has never realized that kissing can feel like this, even in real life. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s dreaming that does it to him, every phantom sensation amplified within his nerves. Seoho’s kissing him like he’s drowning in air. 

“I just wish…”

Seoho's skin is still cold to the touch, Geonhak notices when he takes him by the hand, but he shivers at the contact. Shivers, like Geonhak's touch is a jolt of electricity. Geonhak only has to wonder about this for a split second until he realizes that it's because he's burning hot, and the difference in their temperatures must be just as jarring to Seoho as it is to him.

"You're very warm," Seoho mutters, articulating Geonhak's thoughts for him. It almost makes him laugh, sometimes, the way they always seem to be on the same wavelength despite very literally living in their own worlds.

"And you're not," Geonhak replies, doing a very poor job of hiding the awe in his voice. It's still strange to him. Despite the fact that Seoho seems to micromanage every minuscule aspect of his dreams, it's like he pays so little heed to his own properties that he feels like he could be ice. Or he chooses to be cold to Geonhak as a way to protect himself, to stop his feelings from manifesting as heat on his skin, as color on his face. It's not all that effective. The dream betrays Seoho's emotions by descending into chaos around them-- distant buildings disintegrate to ash, wind tugs at Geonhak's hair. 

(As well, Seoho's completely transparent with the way his gaze flits down to fixate on Geonhak's lips.)

"It's alright," Geonhak tells him. "I'll keep you warm. Can I?..."

Slowly, like Seoho's an ice sculpture that might shatter if he's handled too roughly, Geonhak places his other hand on the back of his neck. He's cold there, too, and Geonhak lets go of Seoho's hand to hold him around his waist. At the same time, just after their combined momentum causes Geonhak to stumble back into the ground, Seoho falls into Geonhak's lap, slots himself into place like he's meant to be there.

"Yeah," Seoho says, out of time and out of breath. "Yes. Please."

It's like he's dreaming. And Geonhak knows that he is, but the way Seoho kisses him makes him hyper-aware of that. The way his lips move against his, the little sounds he makes every time Geonhak kisses him deeper, the way his body jerks just a bit every time Geonhak touches him, everything seems to reinforce the fact that this moment can't possibly be real, that Seoho can't possibly be real. At the same time, Geonhak's much too lost in him to be disheartened by this.

"I never want this to end," Geonhak says lowly. He barely even registers the fact that the hand he has on Seoho's waist is travelling up under his shirt, exploring just how far the coolness of his skin stretches up his back.

"This?" Seoho says with a slight mischievous smile, punctuating the word by grinding down on Geonhak's lap. Geonhak lets out a small noise, a surprised noise, and that only makes Seoho smile wider. 

So, Geonhak leans forward and presses a gentle kiss against the underside of his jaw. Seoho exhales, the sound ending in something of a whine. "This," he confirms, voice muffled as his lips make their way down Seoho's neck, blooming strawberries on cold and delicate skin. 

Seoho continues to move against him, continues to whine and gasp and utter Geonhak's name-- quietly at first, but gradually growing louder in time with the way he increases the speed of his thrusts. He's no longer teasing him, instead falling into a rhythm of quiet desperation. The sudden rush of heat that blooms across his chest makes Geonhak think that no, Seoho isn't just like the cold northern breeze; he’s like a trade wind that promises to carry Geonhak back to shore while he's floating aimlessly in the middle of the sea.

"My god," Geonhak gasps, "You're so perfect." And just as he says it, thunder rumbles through their imaginary city, droplets fall from the heavy clouds in their imaginary sky. 

It's only a matter of time before lightning's flashing and rain is pouring onto their rooftop and it's soaking all their clothes, but none of it matters, nothing matters because nothing's real. Yet it's all too real, because millions of megawatts of electricity are lighting every one of Geonhak's nerves on fire, because Seoho is so beautiful and his reactions are so visceral and the way he grips Geonhak by the shoulders and cries out, so vulnerable and beautiful and there, can't possibly be anything but real. 

The winds are finally quiet now, the air finally still. The last thing he sees is Seoho's face when he finishes, the way he knits his brows and opens his mouth in a wordless cry, eyes closed in a stormy sort of serenity, and it's such a beautiful sight that it'd have been enough to tip him over the edge had he not opened his eyes, waking up in his own bed with cold sweat running down his throat and back.

* * *

Later, Geonhak thinks that maybe he'd woken himself up because some things are simply too perfect to exist in reality. Because Seoho is a dream within a dream, for his own sake, Geonhak should-- must simply pretend that this is enough for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you think seoho is real? should he be? vote now on your phones! 
> 
> this is my favorite chapter of the bunch, i think :D too much happens but i think the scenes by themselves are cool? i dont know though, im bad at analyzing my own writing . that being said, please tell me your thoughts and theories so far if you have any, posting this is still really nerve-wracking for me so id love a bit of encouragement <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fact that he’s dreaming aside, there’s something truly dreamlike about this; laying on grass that’s just a little too soft, staring at skies that are a little too blue, having someone a little too perfect by his side. Seoho looks like he’s at peace, eyes closed against a sun that’s a little too bright. Their hands lay close, reaching out yet not quite touching. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nsfw warning for the third scene. blood warning for the first, but it's just a small injury. references to dissociation around the end.

“Seoho, have you ever. Had a thorn stuck in your finger?”

Seoho hums. “Can’t recall, but I guess I can imagine it.”

“It doesn’t have to be a thorn,” Geonhak continues. “It could be a splinter, a thumbtack, anything that gets stuck.”

“It’s like that, I think.” Geonhak heaves a breath. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, what _it_ is, but something spurs him onwards. “It hurts a lot when it gets stuck, and maybe you cry a bit. You ignore it because you can’t get it out, and…”

Seoho is listening so attentively now. There’s no sign of his usual teasing self, not a ghost of his characteristic eye smile gracing his features.

“Your skin heals over it, and it doesn’t hurt anymore, eventually.” Geonhak’s eyes grow heavy. “It doesn’t hurt, but it’s still there, a part of you--”

“And when you rip it out, it hurts more than anything you’ve ever known,” Seoho finishes for him. 

Geonhak looks at him with a grimace. “Yeah.”

He holds up his hand. Fingers don’t flicker between five and six and four anymore. He has five fingers, like he does in the waking world. There’s a thorn stuck in the pad of his thumb, and he’s bleeding. Blood trails down his fingers, down his hand, and then down his wrist and arm.

It trails down, spreading and diffusing like ink. 

Seoho blinks once, then immediately takes his hand from him. He’s still horribly cold, but there’s something about his touch this time that feels so gentle, so warm. This takes Geonhak by surprise because even now, Seoho doesn’t really initiate contact-- it’s usually Geonhak who grabs his hand while they’re idle, who hooks his arm around his delicate waist, who drags him close for a kiss or teasingly kisses his way down his neck. Seoho holding his hand is such a small thing. And yet.

He keeps going, closes both of his hands around Geonhak’s; gently. When he takes them away, the wound is gone, Geonhak’s hand is healed. The dark, ink-like bloodstain remains.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Geonhak breathes.

Seoho shrugs. “You made the thorn appear. I figured I could make it go away.”

They’re in the meadow where they first met, and it’s the first time in which an exact place had appeared twice in Geonhak, or Seoho's dreams. Flowers shake and shiver in the breeze.

“I don’t know why I feel like this,” Geonhak says slowly, heavily. “I didn’t know them all that well. I could have, but I didn’t, and it was too late--”

Seoho’s hands close around Geonhak’s again. Geonhak’s still talking, speaking so quickly that he doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore, and he can’t stop himself even if he so desperately wants to.

“Maybe I could’ve stopped it. Maybe I could’ve prevented whatever-- whatever happened if I just spoke to them. And I know there’s no point to this, that I shouldn’t blame myself but--” Geonhak’s voice breaks off into a sob.

At some point, outside of the bounds of Geonhak’s half-present awareness, Seoho’s gotten closer, burying his face in the crook of his shoulder.

 _Maybe I could’ve been whole,_ Geonhak finishes his sentence in a thought.

It’s much too late when he realizes that Seoho is crying, too, that there are tear stains on his sweater that aren’t from himself. Spreading and diffusing like ink.

* * *

Geonhak realizes that his sweater’s wet before he hears the dripping showerhead above him.

As soon as he steps out of the bathtub, he heads for the living room. Youngjo’s busy typing something on his laptop. Geonhak looks at the clock. The clock is showing a real time, 2AM, which means that he’s not dreaming. (It’s a bit ridiculous, but these days, he feels like he can’t quite tell anymore. He doesn’t need the signs to tell if he’s dreaming-- he needs them if he wants to know if he’s awake.) At this point, he knows better than to question why Youngjo’s awake at 2AM. 

“Geonhak?” Youngjo says, standing up. 

Geonhak musters a weak smile.

“Jesus Christ, Hak, I was worried about you.” Youngjo rushes up and catches him in an embrace. Geonhak doesn’t fight back. “Why’d you fall asleep in the bathtub?”

Geonhak blinks drearily. “I don’t remember. I don’t know.”

“Is it the nightmares again?” Youngjo squeezes him a bit tighter. It’s comforting.

“It’s worse, I think.”

When Geonhak goes back to sleep, he doesn’t dream. Maybe it’s for the best.

* * *

Usually, Geonhak would attribute a location like this to one of Seoho’s dreams, but their dreams have started to fuse together to an extent where it’s near-impossible to tell which dream is whose. Likewise, it’s hard to tell where each of their bodies start, because it feels like Seoho’s hands and arms and lips are _everywhere_. 

“How are you this fucking toned,” Seoho deadpans. Shamefully, Geonhak feels himself shiver in delight.

“Do you look like this in real life,” Seoho asks, trailing one of his fingers over each bump of Geonhak’s abdominals, forcing him to fight against every last one of his instincts to struggle, squirm. Geonhak barely manages to muster a _yes._ Seoho's hands ghost over his body, a culmination of all the pre-sunrise gym visits before work and the dull but comforting exhaustion of repetitive strength training, like it's now his to own.

They’re in a crumbling house, in a bed that’s splintered and all but collapsed. The paint around them is peeling off. One of the walls has been knocked down entirely, letting wind permeate the building itself, and there’s nothing over the horizon as far as the eye can see. Geonhak doesn’t feel cold, can’t feel cold when Seoho’s body-- unusually warm, for him-- is pressed flush against him like this. Doesn’t care about the emptiness over the horizon when Seoho’s observing him carefully through his hooded eyes. When Seoho’s _pretty_ , so pretty. 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Seoho mutters as his hand reaches down, down, and down. Geonhak’s mind is so blank that he barely registers this.

“Yeah?” Geonhak says breathlessly. Seoho’s fingers ghost over his abs _again_ and it sends another shock wave through him. Why does he have to be ticklish even in his _dreams_ , he thinks. 

“I know how it feels.” Seoho shifts his weight, repositioning himself on Geonhak. Over Geonhak, in a position where he can exert control. “Blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have helped.”

Seoho’s hands trail lower still, stopping briefly at the hem of Geonhak’s sweatpants before he reaches in and touches him where it counts. Geonhak _growls_ , just barely suppressing a wanton cry.

“I’m not. like you. but we’re similar, right?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Geonhak says, voice coming out oddly clearly through the haze.

“Mm. But i think about it a lot sometimes. about why I don’t… about why the system works for everyone but not me.”

Of course, Seoho punctuates this with a particularly cruel jerk of his wrists. For a moment, Geonhak wonders if Seoho chose this moment to open up to him on purpose, choosing a moment where Geonhak’s most vulnerable and Seoho’s decidedly not. Like this is the only way they can be on equal ground while Seoho’s laying his emotions and personhood bare.

_The system works for everyone, but not me. So there must be something wrong with me._

_So I can't be loved._

To Geonhak, the thought is as familiar to him as a winding neighborhood road he'd always encounter on his way home. 

It’s not true for either of them, it’s not their fault. But Seoho doesn’t think this way because the system that’s supposed to be perfect, supposed to make sense, broke down on _him._ He was forced to take control of his own destiny in a world where nobody is really expected to do so. And that’s why he dreams, why he turns to systems that _do_ make sense in a place where they aren’t supposed to.

“I was doing so well, Geonhak.” Seoho closes his eyes. He’s not moving so much anymore, and Geonhak has to fight back the urge to _squirm_ because he _wants_ so, so bad. “But the universe brought me you. You know things that i haven’t told anyone in a lifetime, not just because you’ve coaxed it out of me, but because--” a heave. “You’re in my dreams, you’re in my mind. And worst of all, you’re smart enough to figure me out.”

“I’m sorry,” Geonhak says lowly. 

“Don’t apologize.” Seoho’s hand moves again, and this time, Geonhak’s gone. 

* * *

Geonhak gives his class a sketching assignment. Someone draws a castle in the sky. It’s simple, a majestic building sitting on top of a floating mass of land. And he can’t explain it, but something about the concept warms his heart, makes him smile. It’s something he’ll have to tell Seoho about, one of these days. He'd love it.

* * *

They’re in a wide-open plain, this time. There’s nobody around, but that’s to be expected at this point, and the world is open and clear in the palm of their hands. Despite this, there’s a sense of intimacy in the fact that it’s just the two of them, that nobody can access this little world of theirs besides themselves.

Geonhak has a surreptitious hand on Seoho’s waist, holding him as they walk across the field together. 

“This is new,” Seoho comments, his mouth widening into a grin. “Is your mind just too blank to think of anything today?”

The clouds aren’t out today, but Geonhak avoids commenting on this in case it gives Seoho any more ammunition. Seoho’s eyes look so lovely in the sun.

Geonhak huffs. “Big talk for someone in tackling range.”

Seoho just smiles sweetly. “Like you’d let go of me like that.” 

After giving his waist one reverent squeeze, Geonhak doesn’t even give Seoho the time to yell, let alone add another snarky remark before tackling him into the ground. They fall back in a fit of laughter, and the grass below is soft instead of scratchy, ticklish on Geonhak’s elbows. 

The momentum rolls them around once, positioning Seoho on top of Geonhak. And Seoho’s so pretty like this, with his smile reaching his eyes, with the sun behind his head like a radiant halo, that it doesn’t take much for Geonhak to lean forward and kiss him. 

Seoho’s not as cold as he used to be. Geonhak reaches up to cradle the back of his neck, to hold him still-- kiss him deeper. When they part, Seoho starts _laughing_ for some reason.

“What’s with you and strawberries,” Seoho laughs. “That’s what you taste like. Again.”

Geonhak’s not like Seoho, not yet. He can’t control the temperature of his body, can’t even make sure he has all ten of his fingers most of the time, but he’s been getting better. He understands _why_ Seoho does that, maintaining such a tight grip on his dream-form, ensuring that no pieces of himself can slip out unnoticed. Something so harmless, like the taste of strawberries in his mouth, makes Geonhak wonder what else might have slipped from him over time.

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Geonhak insists, and Seoho doesn’t stop laughing when Geonhak tackles him again.

* * *

The fact that he’s dreaming aside, there’s something truly dreamlike about this; laying on grass that’s just a little too soft, staring at skies that are a little too blue, having someone a little too perfect by his side. Seoho looks like he’s at peace, eyes closed against a sun that’s a little too bright. Their hands lay close, reaching out yet not quite touching. 

Convinced that Seoho isn’t looking, won’t notice, Geonhak concentrates for a moment. He imagines a thin red string, one end tied to his little finger and the other tied to Seoho’s. It only takes a couple of seconds for this to materialize into fragile reality.

The string is delicate and bright against the grass, a little bit longer than Geonhak had envisioned with a series of knots and overlaps around the center. At this exact moment, Seoho opens his eyes and lazily blinks the sunlight away. Geonhak’s worried that he’ll quip or make fun of him, but instead, Seoho just shoots him a tiny smirk when he spots the string.

“Hey,” Geonhak says softly. “This is a weird question, but-- can you draw on my arm?”

“Why? Is that something you’re into?” Geonhak sputters, and Seoho’s smirk widens. “What, you want to be my soulmate that bad?”

This sends an unexpected pang across Geonhak’s heart.

“I’ll do it,” Seoho tells him. Not a second later, he conjures a marker out of thin air. It’s a pink marker, one that Geonhak would have in his classroom, and it’s supposedly strawberry-scented. In Geonhak’s experience, it smells nothing like strawberries, but as soon as Seoho uncaps it, the scent of the summer fruit immediately overwhelms his senses.

Seoho reaches forward and grips Geonhak’s wrist in a way that’s both methodical and so, so gentle, like any sudden movement he makes will turn Geonhak into dust and send him blowing away into the wind. And Seoho’s handwriting is messy, but it’s quick-- he writes a thick pink _miss me?_ on the inside of Geonhak’s forearm.

“Because I’m sure you will,” Seoho explains, voice a melancholic sort of teasing. “I’m sure you think of me every second you’re awake.”

(He does.)

At that moment, something appears on Seoho’s arm, materializing so quickly that Geonhak briefly wonders if it was always there. But it wasn’t-- it wasn’t there a minute ago, when he was imagining a red thread around Seoho’s finger. It’s a phrase written in fading pink marker, the same _miss me_ he wrote on Geonhak’s arm.

“Seoho,” Geonhak breathes. “Your arm.”

Seoho snorts. “I’m not your soulmate, Hak. You won’t make me fall for that.”

Geonhak’s about to say no, he’s not making him fall for anything, it’s actually there. But, just as quickly as it appeared, it’s gone. Seoho’s skin remains unstained, unblemished. 

Seoho lets go of Geonhak’s hand, makes the marker disappear and lays down to look up at the sky once again. There’s a few moments of silence, a silence that’s somehow thick with tension and comfortingly familiar at the same time.

Maybe, like with the red string, Geonhak had willed it to happen. Or maybe it simply hadn’t happened at all. Dreams aren’t supposed to make sense. 

“Do you think it’s destiny,” Geonhak murmurs, “that we found each other like this?”

Seoho snaps his head around to face him.

“I don’t _believe_ in destiny, Geonhak.”

“Do you believe in me?”

Seoho doesn’t answer.

* * *

When Geonhak jolts awake, he realizes that he still doesn’t know whether or not Seoho’s real . 

Geonhak gets up, hobbles out of his bedroom. The curtains are closed, but light's streaming in through the translucent fabric. It's cloudy outside. The walls are grey. The clock on the living room wall reads 6AM. No signs of activity, so it must mean that Youngjo's still asleep. He looks at his hands. He has ten fingers.

It hits him, then that whether Seoho's real isn't exactly the pressing question at the moment. He almost isn’t quite sure if _he’s_ real anymore, when he’s not dreaming-- his hands feel disjointed from his body, and his body hardly obeys his commands, floating within the universe like a column of wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a really short chapter but it's the chapter im the most nervous about because it's so emotionally charged. so, tell me your thoughts?
> 
> the next chapter is effectively the last one, as ch6 is a very short epilogue , so im super excited to share it! see you all tomorrow <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geonhak’s dealt with loss. He’d waited days, weeks, months for ink to appear on his skin again, rationalizing every injury and stain with hope even if he explicitly remembered where they came from. He’d dealt with the firsthand agony of having a thorn shoved through his palm and the arguably worse agony of having it ripped out of him, even voluntarily. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick warning about nsfw content in this chapter as well

Geonhak desperately needs new glasses. 

It shows in the way the coffee shop menu blurs while it’s just in front of his eyes. He rarely wears them in favor of his contact lenses, but while he’s been fairly diligent about replacing _those_ every once in a while, his glasses have remained in service for a couple of years now. 

Ah. It’s his turn to order. Geonhak tries to muster his best friendly smile, and his mouth stretches in a way he’s no longer used to-- not in this world. “Strawberry green tea, please. Grande, half sugar. And a venti caramel macchiato.” 

It’s not a long drive back to the school. Geonhak passes by houses, streetlights, heavy clouds in the sky, other cars that blur away like bugs around him, skittering about the narrow roads. He parks in the teachers’ parking lot, and he has to put one of his cups down in order to unlock the school’s front door. It’s early. 

Dongju’s already here, standing up by the whiteboard and jotting down his notes for the day. Geonhak sets the caramel macchiato down on the nearest desk.

“Got your drink, you little shit.” 

Dongju turns around. “What? I said I’ll buy your drink next time!” 

Geonhak laughs. “And do you ever?”

Dongju pouts one of those signature Dongju-pouts, the kind that makes Geonhak want to ruffle his hair until he complains. So he does, and Dongju does complain. 

The sun rises, the sun sets. There are classes to teach, things to be done. Time passes, as it always does, ever-slowly wearing away at the edges of Geonhak’s mind. 

* * *

“You can open your eyes now,” Geonhak tells him. And Seoho does-- slowly, like he’s a newborn kitten about to take in the world for the very first time. 

“So,” Geonhak says, looking over at Seoho, giving his hand a squeeze. “Do you like it?”

It’s one of his bigger projects, but he hasn’t been working on it for long enough than he could have. It’s been slowly constructed at the back of his mind, in waking hours and in dreams with Seoho alike. Even though he’d only visualized the outside of it, the structure’s difficult to manifest all at once. The great castle sits on a floating mass of land, disconnected from and rising above the spot they’re standing in. A long glass stairway connects the mainland, so to speak, all the way to the gates. 

They’re standing in a field of hyacinths, daffodils, marguerite-daisies and windflowers. Looking down from the castle, it must be a sea of colors. 

“Geonhak,” Seoho breathes. He turns around, and stars dot his eyes like flowers dot the grass beneath them. 

“The interior is mostly blank,” Geonhak explains. Surely enough, after they make their way up the great stairs and step inside, there’s an uneasy whiteness that permeates the inside of the structure. It’s vast, lacking hallways, windows, floors, _dimensions_ , but it’s theirs.

“I thought I might’ve let you do that.” Geonhak finds himself holding onto Seoho tightly again, squeezing their interlocked hands together so tightly that it’s like he’s worried Seoho will drift away. “This could be ours, Seoho. A place just for us.”

“I bet I can outdo you,” Seoho tells him with a grin. Geonhak doesn’t doubt that, and later, it becomes clear that he’s right for that.

Seoho weaves a grand ballroom into a portion of the empty space, builds pillars that seem to extend to the sky, then creates marble walls and pristine stone rooftops. He lays out hallways, imagines windows, materializes corridors as they walk, and everything floats perfectly into place. Seoho and Geonhak’s creations slot together like they’re meant to be, and it’s difficult not to be struck with awe at every detail.

And that, Geonhak thinks, is just another part of this Seoho that he’s in love with. Just a tiny part of the equation, but at the same time, he’s been exposed to Seoho’s beautiful mind so often that it’s hard not to be in love with his entire being. He’s been surrounded by the tiniest intricacies of his thoughts, his worries and emotions that fly in the breeze within their dreams. His whims and wishes, his fantasies and desires.

At some point, the only internal structure that remains is the great bedroom at the very top of the castle’s highest tower. A set of pristine stairs, an ornate corridor leads to a set of doors-- and behind these doors, nothing but the primordial space that had filled the castle not a couple of hours ago. (Or has it been days? Time works strangely here.)

“Well. Here’s the most important part,” Geonhak says. Seoho snickers. 

And somehow, they’re oddly synchronized while they do it. Geonhak starts with the floor, and Seoho works on the walls. They match the intricate aesthetic of the corridors, and yet, they're strangely distinct from the rest of the castle.

Something of a bed frame starts to form at the end of the room. 

“Hey, Geonhak?”

“Mm?”

“Look here.”

Geonhak does, and he only sees Seoho’s face for a moment before he’s pulled into a kiss. For once, Seoho tastes sweet, feels warm. As their kiss deepens, Geonhak sneaks his hand up Seoho’s shirt, searching for how much of his skin this new warmth covers. 

Still locked together, they fall onto their materializing bed, all geometric shapes and dream-dust. Time passes, and as Geonhak maps out more of Seoho’s skin with his hands, the bed becomes more of a bed. The room, likewise, becomes more of a room.

Suddenly, Geonhak has a thought. As a final touch, he creates a mirror, something that sprawls over the entirety of the room’s east wall. There are a set of stained-glass windows to the west, and sunlight reflects blindingly off the smooth surface. At the sight of himself in the mirror, Seoho seems to instinctively curl in on himself.

“What,” Seoho says. He sounds half-scandalized and half-curious.

“Is this okay?” Geonhak asks gently. “Are you okay with this?”

“It’s certainly exciting,” Seoho says, raising an eyebrow. “But why? And… How did you make it _work_?”

It’s certainly an enigma. Geonhak hadn’t expected it to work either, had expected it to be a little bit off with reflecting both of their faces, a bit twisted and imperfect in the way only dream-mirrors can be. But this one’s practically flawless-- if it’s accurate, it must be, because there are no flaws to be reflected in Seoho at all as far as Geonhak is concerned. 

“You’re beautiful.” Geonhak has a hand on Seoho’s waist, now, and his other hand is travelling up his spine. “You’re beautiful, and I want you to see it.”

“Well,” Seoho says. “Can’t say I’ve never wanted to try it.”

For the first time ever, Seoho surrenders all of his control, goes pliant as Geonhak kisses him wherever he wishes, touches him wherever he wishes. His body’s lean and muscled, back _hot_ against Geonhak’s chest. Geonhak can’t see his abs, but he runs his hands over each of their bumps, revelling in the way Seoho arches every time he _moves_. 

“God, Seoho,” Geonhak mutters, tracing a finger over the curve of his inner thigh. And Seoho, to his amusement, winces. It looks like he, too, is ticklish in his dreams. “Are you seeing yourself?”

When Geonhak turns him around, makes him look at the image of himself, of _them_ in the mirror, Seoho’s squinting like he’s trying to limit his vision. Is he anything like this in the real world, Geonhak wonders. His body anywhere as toned, as sensitive, as warm. His cries, the noises he makes anywhere as sweet. Is he anywhere as perfect.

Wind seems to rush in through their window, which is odd considering it’s supposedly been blocked out with glass. The chill that rushes past Geonhak’s ear, however, is undeniable. 

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” Geonhak says into his skin, and he sees the horror in Seoho’s eyes before he _remembers_. 

Remembers the one question he can never ask. Remembers that any time Seoho’s been asked that question by anyone in his dreams, he’s never been able to see them again. The world fades away while Seoho’s mouth opens, while his lips close around words that Geonhak doesn’t manage to catch.

* * *

Geonhak’s dealt with loss. He’d waited days, weeks, months for ink to appear on his skin again, rationalizing every injury and stain with _hope_ even if he explicitly remembered where they came from. He’d dealt with the firsthand agony of having a thorn shoved through his palm and the arguably worse agony of having it ripped out of him, even voluntarily. 

But that was different, wasn’t it? He hadn’t known his soulmate. He could say he did, that he’d fallen in love with their grocery lists and little notes to themselves, their doodles and the cuts and scratches that weren’t his, yet were his to bear. It’s possible, he knows, to fall in love without meeting like Keonhee and Youngjo had, but ink on skin cannot possibly convey an entire personhood-- especially not that of a person that has never talked to him. 

So, this is different. So, horribly different. Seoho’s not (wasn’t?) his soulmate, but he’d known him so much better than his soulmate ever has, could ever had. He knows his mind, knows all of his idiosyncrasies, His whims and wishes, his fantasies and desires. The emotions that float about the winds of their shared dreams. There’s nothing he can do, now, to salve the pain on his palm, nothing he can do but wait for the ink trails in his mind to fade away long enough for him to notice that they’ll never be back again. 

Time still passes, and while time passes, Geonhak finds himself trying to fall asleep. Trying, over and over again, to fall asleep, finally managing to slip away on nights where he stares at a particular spot on his forearm for hours upon hours. Hoping. Dreaming.

When he does sleep, he almost invariably wakes up without dreaming-- at least, for the first few nights. He’d beg, then, to slip into a dream, to be assured that his dream at the castle never happened and he’d never spoken those words to Seoho, that the universe will allow them to meet again, that the rules of the dream-world aren’t as draconian as this. The fact that those dreamless nights would be the best of this becomes clear once the nightmares return. 

They start out innocuous enough. Sometimes, he dreams of nothing, of the same empty space as the inside of his and Seoho’s castle before Seoho was able to fill it in. There’s no door to exit from, no field of flowers, no escape, and there’s certainly no Seoho. It’s enough of a nightmare to leave him hoping, to allow him to search through so much empty space and yet never, ever find him. Time works differently in dreams. It feels like he searches forever.

Over time, they do grow worse, more devastating, more demanding. There’s a dream where Geonhak’s forced to contend with the crumbling building for the first time in several months, and he’s unable to exert even an iota of control over the familiar events of that dream. There’s a dream where the millipede-dragon appears without its rider, swooping over Geonhak’s head and breathing out smoke as if _Geonhak’s_ the reason Seoho’s not there. On some level, that’s correct.

And then there are the dreams where Geonhak can hear Seoho’s voice, his laugh, can feel the rays of his smile without ever seeing it for himself. Out of all the nightmares that haunt him, those are the worst of them all.

* * *

(It’s about one o’ clock in the afternoon when Youngjo’s expected visitor arrives, giving the door a series of timid knocks. 

He’d known that Geonhak’s closest colleague is a student-teacher, but he’d hardly expected someone like the boy at his door, with his shoulder-length blond hair and a trench coat that matches it almost impeccably. That isn’t to say he doesn’t look familiar-- it’s just that when Geonhak last showed Youngjo one of their pictures, a group picture of their homeroom class with the two of them posing at either end, he had black hair that was more or less the same length as Geonhak’s.

“You’re Geonhak’s roommate?” The boy asks. He’s fiddling with the edge of his pocket with one hand.

“That’d be me,” Youngjo replies, tipping his head to the side. “And you’re Dongju, right?”

“That’d be me, too.” Dongju walks into the door when Youngjo steps aside. 

“Geonhak talks about you a lot, you know that? Come in, I’ll make you coffee.” Youngjo gestures at the hallway beyond the living room. “He’s in the first room to the right.”

Youngjo makes himself a cup as well, carrying both cups to the table in front of their couch. He waits in the living room while Dongju’s in Geonhak’s room, and to his surprise, it doesn’t take long for him to emerge. Looks like Geonhak isn’t in a talking mood. These days, he rarely is. 

It’s a bit awkward, at first, but Dongju’s perceptive and Youngjo’s good at reading people. They fall into a relaxed sort of conversation, following their words like they’re a meandering stream, and eventually, they find themselves talking about soulmates. 

“I tried to love my soulmate,” Dongju says, “but I just couldn’t.”

One in twenty people do not have a soulmate at all, but this statistic does nothing to account for the people who are estranged, the people who have been rejected, the people who simply decided not to start anything, and the people who chose to take fate into their own hands. They exist outside the system, and most of them live happy lives. From what Youngjo knows about Dongju, this is also the case for him.

It’s no wonder he and Geonhak get along so well. 

“I’ve always wondered about this, but.” Youngjo takes a sip of his coffee and purses his lips. “Is there any way to?...”

“Sever your soulmate?” Dongju asks, to which Youngjo nods.

“There isn’t,” he says with a sense of finality. “I’ve had a friend do it. It doesn’t work. You meet your soulmate in places where you don’t want to see them. The ink still appears on your skin, but it’s distorted, and the messages don’t come out right. But you don’t get peace, either. The only way a connection could really be severed is if they're gone."

Dongju puts his cup down on the table. “The process is so painful, too. And expensive.” Suddenly, his mouth flips itself into a smile. “Besides, I like Bomin. I like having the opportunity to bother him every once in a while.” 

“Do you have a soulmate, Youngjo?” Dongju asks, just before silence settles into the space between them for too long.

The warmth that spreads across Youngjo’s heart whenever he thinks about Keonhee has become as natural to him as breathing. “Yeah.”

Dongju settles himself into the couch like he’s preparing to stay for a while. He crosses one of his legs over the other. “What's it like?”

What’s it like, indeed. For as long as he could remember, Youngjo’s always been the type to covet love stories with fairy-tale simplicity-- love at first sight, a couple of dates, marriage and forever. Under some standards, he’s had one, of sorts, with Keonhee, but what they have seems far too complex to quantify within the sparse pages of a picture book. And yet, they’d simply fallen into place. 

“I loved him before we met,” Youngjo confesses. “I love how he knew what. He showed me glimpses of his mind, and I fell in love with that.” 

“That’s _precious_ ,” Dongju practically coos. 

The clock’s moved forward quite a bit from when they’d first started talking. Dongju’s finished his coffee, and the last of Youngjo’s cup has gone cold. 

“Geonhak told me about the day you met, you know.” Dongju stretches himself out on the couch. “Complained about having to drive you to the airport.” 

“Complained, did he?” Youngjo raises an eyebrow. “I’ll have to have a talk with him when he wakes up.”

“Don’t be mean to him, will you?”

Youngjo chuckles, then glances slyly at the door to Geonhak’s room. “No promises.”) 

* * *

Dongju comes by whenever he can, and Youngjo stays with him as often as he can manage. The best moments, however, happen whenever they’re together-- their banter always makes the room feel light and easy. They’re so different, Geonhak thinks, but the fact that two of the three most important people in his life get along so well makes him indescribably happy. The pain fades into the background, but it certainly doesn’t fade away.

It’s the familiar, numbing pain of a thorn in his palm.

Sometimes Hwanwoong comes by, too. Hwanwoong understands Geonhak’s situation even less than Dongju and Youngjo do, but he doesn’t belittle him for it, instead taking a unique interest in small goals he’d achieve-- small signifiers that he’s better off than the day before, and the day before that. Geonhak decides that he likes him even more than Dongju, so one day, he pulls Dongju aside to tell _him_ to be good to _Hwanwoong_. 

“Alright, sure,” Dongju says with a roll of his eyes. “You do know I already do that, right? If there’s anyone who needs to be pampered in this relationship, it’s m--”

“Oh, shut up!” Hwanwoong calls out from the living room.

While he’s busy using up all his vacation days just to _cope_ , Geonhak gets news from the school as well. Apparently, while Sungyoon takes most of his classes, Joochan's been teaching more and more of them on his own. It seems like he’s well on his way to finishing up his student-teacher training. If one good thing can come out of this, Geonhak’s glad.

One day, Geonhak makes lunch for himself on a day when the sun’s shining through the window. His skin begins to heal around the thorn. 

* * *

Of course it’s Youngjo that Keonhee usually calls, but Geonhak’s found that Keonhee’s been occupying more and more of his phone time lately. His presence demands his attention, and conversations with him always seem to demand genuine answers.

So, Keonhee naturally becomes the first person Geonhak talks to about his dreams, his nightmares, Seoho, everything. Geonhak doesn’t even know why he does it, or how, or when; it just comes out of him, breaking through like a dam that’s been fit to burst for as long as anyone could remember. 

“Do you think,” Keonhee says in that considerate voice of his, “that he could be your soulmate?”

“I had a soulmate,” Geonhak replies, confused. “I had one. But I lost them. He can’t be my soulmate, that’s impossible.”

“But It could be quite the beautiful soulmate tale, couldn’t it?" At this point, Geonhak could almost hear the smile in Keonhee’s voice. “You dreamed, and through your dreams, you were able to will the bond into existence.”

“I’ve lost him, Keonhee. He’s gone.”

“You can’t really lose a soulmate.”

Geonhak wonders if that even really applies to him. Because if that’s the rule, it’s quite amazing that he’d managed to be the exception twice. 

* * *

Geonhak stands in front of the mirror. He’s faced with his own reflection, this time, confronted by his own mussed hair and disheveled clothes. 

He lifts his hand to touch the mirror, and his reflection's hand surges to meet it halfway. When he touches it, he half-expects his hand to pass right through it like it’s water, but it doesn’t. The surface of the mirror is cold, an ice sculpture that can shatter at any moment. 

So Geonhak faces himself, but when he starts to speak, he doesn’t quite know who he’s talking to.

“You thought you couldn’t be loved.”

His reflection doesn’t change, doesn’t move, doesn’t respond. He hadn’t expected it to.

Geonhak leans in until he’s gently resting his head against the mirror. The glass is colder on his forehead than it had been on his hand. 

“I hope I was able to change your mind.” 

He takes a step back and looks at his hands. Ten fingers. His skin remains pristine and unmarked-- not by old wounds, and certainly not by ink. 

“It wasn’t destiny, it was just us.” A slow exhale. “I love you.”

Silence, but Geonhak swears that he could feel something on his skin, something like a gust of wind rushing past his ears. In another world, maybe he’d been heard. That would be enough. 

* * *

To Geonhak’s relief, his first day back is easy, and he didn't need to write a lesson plan. They do arts and crafts, and the class gets plenty of free time to work on their projects by themselves. 

A few things have changed since he’d last visited. For one, someone in the faculty had finally decided to take the blasted soulmate poster down, bless their kind heart. In its place now stands a simple motivational poster with the classic _you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take_ slogan and a picture of a basketball hoop on a concrete court. It’s still boring, but the wall’s a lot more tolerable to look at. 

“Hey, Mr. Kim?”

Geonhak looks up from his desk. He’d recognized Wonyoung’s voice already. Her arms are covered in ink of all different colors all the way up to her short sleeves.

“Can you draw me something?” She asks him sheepishly. 

“For your soulmate?” Wonyoung nods eagerly.

Geonhak props up his chin with a hand. “Sure, I can draw you something. What would you like?” 

“We’ve been drawing pictures for each other, and I have an idea! She likes bugs, and she likes dragons, so I think it would be nice if I could show her something that’s both?” Wonyoung’s expression begins to turn into a small frown. “But I don’t know how to draw that.”

Ignoring the jolt that runs down his spine, Geonhak widens his smile. “I think I know what you’re talking about. It’s very interesting and creative. Can it also breathe fire?”

“Wait, can insects _do_ that?”

"“I've had a friend say there's a beetle that could." Geonhak shrugs. "I don't know how much i believe him. He knows a lot about everything, but nothing too deep about anything.”

“Huh.” Wonyoung reaches out and gives him her forearm to draw on. “Can you draw me one, then? One that she can see too?”

It’s been a while. Geonhak doesn’t quite remember all the details anymore, and it’s not like he had a perfect isometric view of the creature while he was on it, anyway, but he manages. The dragon-insect begins to take shape on Wonyoung’s arm, and seeing the absurd creature take form fills his heart with a slight but deep sense of longing and regret.

Someday, it’ll all be nothing more than a pleasant memory for him. 

“It’s so creepy!” Wonyoung squeals with delight. “Thank you so much, Mr. Kim!”

“Anytime,” Geonhak says easily.

* * *

It isn’t until he’s on the drive home when Geonhak notices that he’d gotten just a bit of ink on his thumb. He would’ve attributed it to Wonyoung’s dragon, but this stain is blue, and he clearly remembers drawing that in black ink. 

When he gets back to the apartment, he takes it to the sink and tries to wash it off, but it holds on for an unusual amount of time. It falters and fades with a little bit of soap, but as it fades away, another ink mark forms a few centimeters apart.

The new mark appears suddenly, but it’s not a stain. It spreads on his skin almost deliberately, and the ink forms like smoke rising from a fire, swirling and dancing across his wrist until it clearly spells out a phrase. Geonhak watches it happen, watches the words form while he’s frozen in place as if the slightest movement could shake the ink off. As if he’s dreaming and the slightest movement could wake him up.

 _Miss me?_ The words spelled on his arm. And the handwriting-- it's nothing like that of the person he'd never met, who used to write on his arm until they'd suddenly stopped, but it's unmistakeably familiar nonetheless.

The edges of Geonhak’s smile clash with the tears forming in his eyes as he reaches for the closest pen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the last effective chapter of this fic! the next chapter is an epilogue, it's super short and it's a huge flash-forward, so . 
> 
> thank you so much for accompanying me on this journey, and especially, thank you to everyone who's commented so far:D you've all made me feel so much better about sharing this !! it's truly been in the making for a long, long time and i'm so excited that people seem to enjoy it! any thoughts? anything cool you've noticed? feel free to leave a comment below <33 if u play genshin i hope u get xiao if ure summoning for him!!


	6. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the end.

Geonhak wakes up to the sun in his eyes. 

It’s coming out through the cracks in the blinds, painting luminescent lines on the carpet and the bed, and bouncing off the mirror on the far wall. One of the rays diffract over a sock strewn on the ground; it’s patterned with sunflowers.

(They’re relatively new. It seems that over the past few months, Youngjo’s enthusiasm for patterned socks has been gradually but surely spreading to Seoho.)

Geonhak finds himself smiling. Seoho’s apartment has always been messy in the charming way that shows he doesn’t have _complete_ control over his life, leaving clothes over his chairs and couches and work documents over various surfaces. Despite his efforts, messes slip through the cracks, but it’s alright. Maybe this place has become their castle. 

“Shut up,” Seoho mutters, voice muffled by a heavy layer of duvet. 

Geonhak sits up to look over at Seoho’s side of the bed, to where he currently has his back turned and face buried in the blanket. (He’s taking up most of it.) “What?”

“You’re thinking.” Seoho rolls around. His eyes are just a little bit open, reflecting just a bit of the sunlight and turning his brown eyes gold. “It’s loud, and I’m trying to sleep. Shut up.”

“Alright,” Geonhak says with a laugh. “Alright, I’ll shut up.”

“Don’t actually. I like your voice.” One of Seoho’s bare legs brush against Geonhak’s underneath the covers. His skin is warm. “It’s even deeper in the morning. I didn’t think that was even possible.”

Seoho’s eyes are almost fully open now, sickled by the slight smile on his lips. Geonhak surges forward to kiss them. 

At some point, Seoho reaches out to touch his palm against the side of Geonhak’s cheek, holding it there like it’s the only way he’s anchoring himself to the world, to him. For a split second, Geonhak catches a glimpse of a splotch of ink on the back of Seoho’s hand that hasn’t fully washed off just yet. He has one to match. 

Immediately after they part, Seoho wrinkles his nose into a scowl with no real venom. “What was that for?”

“You were making me flustered. I needed you to shut up.”

Seoho rolls his eyes. Between them, the air becomes comfortably still. 

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” Geonhak says, shifting closer to press himself up against the expanse of Seoho’s skin. Seoho immediately curves into him like he belongs in the crook of his neck and the curve of his body, and he’s so warm, ridiculously warm-- it’s been hard to get used to.

In the mirror on the bedroom wall, nothing flickers, and Geonhak trusts it to reflect the actual image of this room and of _them_ for once. It reminds him that they’re finally real. Geonhak’s hair is mussed and sticking up in random places, and Seoho looks like he’s been working overtime for at least a week in a row (he has). And they’re beautiful together.

“You’re not, I promise.” In the mirror, Seoho smiles like sunlight. “I love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha gay 23k words of gay
> 
> i think ive said everything i wanted to say in the a/n of the last chapter. if you made it this far, congratulations and thank you so much! :D i had a blast reading all the theories and interpretations on the past few chapters, so if you haven't already, i'd really appreciate it if you'd tell me your thoughts in the comments <3
> 
> you can find me on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/toemoon). i don't bite (often)

**Author's Note:**

> make sure to tell me your thoughts in the comments! kind words are always nice and it's what keeps writers writing <3


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